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COMMENTARY 



ON 



PAUL'S EPISTLE TO ROMANS ; 

WITH AN 

EXCURSUS ON THE FAMOUS PASSAGE IN JAMES 
(Chap. II.: 14-26). 



BY 



REV. JOHN MILLER. 




PRINCETON, N. J.: 
EVANGELICAL REFORM PUBLICATION CO., 

1887. 
Mailed post-paid by this Company on receipt of price. 



t>^ 



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Copyright, 

1887, 

By JOHN MILLER. 



Press of W. L. Mershon & Co. 
Rahway, N . J. 



PREFACE. 



I. There is a vast difference between the sentence " I will 
have mercy on whom I will have mercy" (E. V., Rom. 9 : 15), 
and the sentence " I will have mercy on whomsoever I can 
have mercy." It would be worth a life-time of an exegete to 
establish this rendering, especially if he added to it, " So, then, 
it is not of the willing, nor of the running, but of the mercy 
showing God " (v. 16), and also, " Therefore, one man whom 
He has a desire after (see Matt. 27 : 43), He shows mercy to, 
and another man whom He has a desire after. He hardens " 
(v. 20). This nest of proof texts which have done awful 
service for doubt, would sweeten the whole of Paul if they can 
give this bettered idea of Jehovah's sovereignty. 

II. There is a vast difference between the sentence " obedi- 
ence to the faith " (E. V., 1:5), and the sentence " obedience 
of faith." One favors the view of doctrinalism, or our believ- 
ing our way into the kingdom. The other makes faith obedi- 
ence, and itself a moral act, or the beginning of a better life. 

III. There is a vast difference between the sentence, " justi- 
fied by faith" (E. V. 3 : 28), and the sentence, "made right- 
eous in the shape of faith " {inate7'ial dative). One builds a 
doctrine not lisped of till the Reformation, and the other rests 
upon the atonement, and considers righteousness that imparted 
righteousness which Paul means by what we have already 
noticed in the " obedience of faith." 

IV. There is a vast difference between the sentence, *' for 
that all have sinned " (E. V., 5 : 12), and the sentence, "on 
Him at whose charges all did the sinning." We quit looking 
for an apodosis across a quarter of a chapter ; we put an end 
to the champion parenthesis of Holy Writ (E. V., vs. 13-17) ; 



8 PREFACE, 

we unearth an orthodox sense ; we shut up protasis and apo- 
dosis in a single verse ; and we reduce this most baffling sen- 
tence of the ten (vs. 12-21) to a similarity to all the rest in 
its balanced signification, " Wherefore as by one man sin came 
into the world, so death by sin, and thus to all men death 
passed through on to Him at whose charges all did the sinning." 

V. There is a vast difference between the sentence, " Until 
the law sin was in the world " (E. V., 5 : 13), and the sentence, 
^* As far as there was law." One is thrown away upon a case 
that never happens, while the other is the soundest ethic. In 
proportion as there is law, men sin. And as all men have law, 
at least in an original conscience, all sin. Even the Devil 
has law. It is necessary to accountability. For, as this same 
apostle expresses it. Without law ** there is no transgression " 

(4 :iS). 

VI. There is a vast difference between the sentence, " I was 
alive without the law once" (E. V., 7 : 9), setting men to 
dreaming when that could be, and the wholesome moral fact 
that sin is the punishment of sin. Paul is full of this concep- 
tion of " death." " The wages of sin is death." " The 
strength of sin is the law." '^ Without the law sin is dead ; " 
and then the present verse following immediately after : — " I 
had been alive without the law at any time." That is, sin 
would be no cause of sin but for a law, and release God from 
the obligation of law, and no poor sinner would continue a 
moment under the power of sin. 

VII. There is a vast difference between the sentence, " All 
things work together for good " (E. V., 8 : 28), and the sen- 
tence, God " works as to all things for good with them that 
love " Him. In the other way it is true, but irrelevant. In 
the literal way it agrees with prayer. Prayer, we have just 
been hearing (vs. 26, 27), is made prayer by God working m 
us and with us in intercessions otherwise unutterable ; and 
Paul, wishing to complete the idea, adds, " And we know " 
that prayer is not peculiar in this concursus, " We know 
that He works as to all things for good with them that love 
God." 



PREFACE. 9 

VIII. There is a vast difference between the sentence, " de- 
clared to be the Son of God " (E. V., i : 4), and the sentence, 
" determined on as the Son of God." One postulates an 
eternal Sonship, and that it is only " declared " in time. The 
other ranges itself with such expressions as ** Mine elect ; " it 
agrees with the account " by that man whom he hath or- 
dained " (E. v.. Acts 17 : 31, the same word, bpi^ui^ determined 
on) ; it agrees with Gabriel where he is satisfied with the word 
*'be called" (E. V., Lu. i : 35) ; it agrees with Gabriel's 
reasons marked by his expressive ^''therefore,'' and with Paul's 
(see Commentary) ; and best of all, it agrees with the same 
root three sentences before (Rom. 1:1), employed as of Paul 
himself, and translated by King James, " separated unto the 
gospel of God." 

Let our Preface deal with samples, therefore. We are con- 
tent that way. If they are new, they should be watched. If 
they are true, they should be treasured. But if they are both 
new and true, that is not what has roused us to the work. 
These and a multitude of others are not simply new texts, 
adding, if they are supported by the Greek, new paragraphs 
to the Word of God, but they bring to bay a concerted system 
of mistakes. Protestantism has ascribed too little morality to 
God, and demanded too little morality of men. Paul has 
been the arch-priest of horrors, and the world is beginning to 
move. To sweeten Paul is not only hermeneutically right, but 
theologically the thing required, as the curse of the Reformed 
just now is, that they build Rome with a faith that has no 
works, and place at the top of their creed Sovereignty instead 
of Holiness. 

JOHN MILLER. 

Princeton, Oct. 16, 1885. 



COMMENTARY. 

THE EPISTLE TO CERTAIN ROMANS OF PAUL THE APOSTLE. 

Paul does not call himself " the apostle to the Romans " (E. V.), 
for he had possibly never seen Rome. The like mistake 
is made by the Revisionists. It occurs in all his epistles. We 
are not to say " Apostle to the Corinthians," or " Apostle to 
the Hebrews " (E. V. and Re.), but " Epistle to " each of these 
different people. Moreover we are not to say, " Epistle to the 
Romafis," but " Epistle to Romans,'' for it was written only to a 
few in Rome. Paul wrote to "the Church of God," or to 
" the saints," or to " the faithful in Christ Jesus " (Rom. 1:7; 
I. Cor. 1:1; Eph. 1:1). Hence there is reason for the word- 
ing, " The Epistle to Romans (or to certain Romans) of Paul 
the Apostle." 

But these titles, writ as we may please, were not inspired ; 
they are of uncertain date ; they are different in different 
MSS. ; they were sometimes changed ; were not always neces- 
sarily correct ; and, in the instance of the " Epistle to certain 
Hebrews/' not necessarily to be relied on to authenticate that 
as an " epistle of Paul" (E. V. and Re.). 



CHAPTER I. 

I. Paul, a bondman of Jesus Christ, called to be an 
Apostle, having been set apart to a Gospel of God. 

I- "Paul;" Paul's Greek name. It occurs first in the 
thirteenth chapter of Acts (v. 9) ; " Then Saul, who also is 
called Paul." Saul is Hebrew, and m.^2Ci\<i asked for y and Paul 
is Greek, and means little. All kindred Greek is transferred 
into the English in two syllables ; as, for example, Festus, not 
Fest, Justus, not Just, Gains, not Gai. That Saulos should be 
rendered Saul is natural, for that is the shape of the word in 
the Hebrew language ; but that Paulos should be rendered 
" Paul^'' is probably to be accounted for by what is accident in 
this similarity of sound ; and perhaps to the same sort of acci- 
dent of sound may be chiefly attributed the whole choice of 
the name. '' Paul^'' moving about among the Greeks, did 
what was customary then, took a name from among that peo- 
ple, and called himself '■'- Paulus ;'' not necessarily because he 
was little (Augustine, De Spir. et Lit. 6, 7, vol. x. p. 207), nor 
probably in honor of Sergius Paulus, who is marked as his 
convert in the very same passage (Acts 13 : 7-9, see Jerome) ; 
but as Joseph was called Hegesippus, and Eliakim, Alkimos, 
because of the alliteration, or because of the affinity, of some 
sort, the one for the other. We may say with confidence that 
there is nothing practically discoverable that is of moment in 
the change. " A bond-man." t^ovkoq is from 6'ei^ to bind. It 
is a prime rule for exegetes to translate by the original mean- 
ing as far as possible. The force, too, of general usage should 
be felt in assigning a signification. We shall presently see that 
'•'■ declared " is a most vicious rendering in the fourth verse, 
because in the seven other places where the original occurs, it 
never once means declared^ h\xt always '■'■ determi?ied on.'' So 
'■''but'' (E. V.) is a very vicious translation in Gal. 2 : 16 ; for 



CHAPTER I, 13 

of the fifty-eight other places where the Greek Mv iin occurs, 
not one will bear the meaning of bid, and in no other case does 
our version imagine so. An attention to this rule alone would 
make a vast difference as against the prepossessions of trans- 
lators. AovAof is found a hundred and twenty-two times in the 
New Testament. " Bondman " will translate it always. It 
literally means a slave. But as it would be needlessly harsh to 
say, "Well done good and faithful slave" (Matt. 25 : 21), or 
" He sent and signified it by His angel to His slave, John " 
(Rev. I : i), or, " These men are slaves of the Most High 
God " (Acts 16 : 17), we sacrifice the advantage where slave 
would be better, as, for example, " slave of sin " (Jo. 8 : 34), or 
"slaves of corruption" (2 Pet. 2 : 19), and translate every- 
where hondjnan. That leaves the word ^lLkovoq [deacofi), which 
has grown technical in an office of the church, to mean a 
higher " servant,'' and to be translated in every instance in that 
way in its thirty passages. " Paul,'' then, " a bondman,'" bought 
with Christ's blood, and sealed forever to his service ! 

" Of Jesus Christ." These names are of different languages, 
and one describes the God in our Redeemer, and the other the 
Man. " Jesus " was a corruption of Joshua j and, though 
Gabriel assigned the name, yet it was a common name (often 
under the form of Jason) at this time among the Israelites. 
Joshua was a name given by Moses, (Num. 13 : 8, 16). Joshua's 
original name was Hoshea. Hoshea meant o?ie who saves, 
Moses added the idea of Jehovah's salvation. And though the 
name fell back to Jeshua (Neh. 8, 17), and in the Greek to 
" Jesus," which means little more than help, yet, to a Jew's eye 
it had all its early significance, and the mere shrinkage by use did 
not blot out Jehovah's part of it. ^' Christ," on the contrary, 
meant Anointed. It was a translation of Messiah. And as God 
is not anointed, it is the title of the Man. ^^ Jesus " is Christ's 
Godlike name as being the Jehovah who saves. " Christ " is a 
human designation, not simply as of one anointed to office. He 
being Prophet, Priest and King, but, as, what that unction 
means, anointed of the Spirit, not simply in all these respects, 
officially, but in all respects, and chiefly in unspotted holiness, 



14 ROMANS. 

and in a form hereafter to be explained of moral recovery 
(6 17). Paul, therefore, pictures himself as a slave of this unspot- 
ted God-Man. 

" Called to be an apostle." "^ called apostle '' would be 
more after the Greek, but then " called saints " in the seventh 
verse would be ambiguous, and might mean named saints. 
Therefore, to translate alike in so near a context, we say 
" called to be " (E. V. & Re.). 

The word a-Koarokoq occurs but once in the Septuagint 
scriptures. " I am sent to thee as a hard messenger" (i Ki. 
14 : 6). ' k.'Koarokrj^ which occurs four times in the New 
Testament, and always means apostleship (E. V.), occurs ten 
times in the Septuagint, and has the wildest variety of mean- 
ing. It means ^^ pestilence'' (Jer. 32 : 36, E. V.) ; it means 
gift or ^'•present'' (i Ki. 9 : 16, E. V.) ; it means ^^ plants'' 
(Cant. 4 : 13, E. V.) ; it means some sort of missive in some 
of the other places. It is clear that these words were of no 
technical use two centuries before Christ. Our only light upon 
their meaning, therefore, is in two facts : first, that Christ 
" chose twelve whom also He named apostles " (Lu. 6 : 13) to 
be eye-witnesses (i Cor. 9 : i) of His ministry and the first 
preachers and founders of His church (Eph. 2 : 20), and sec- 
ond, that, true to this origin of the title, a certain fourteen men, 
viz. Christ's original twelve, and one appointed in the place 
of one of them (Acts 12 : 26), and one miraculously appointed 
afterward, to wit, Paul, always appropriated this name ; and 
that in the eighty-one New Testament passages where it oc- 
curs, it is used of no one else, save once of Christ (Heb. 3 : i), 
twice of "false apostles " (2 Cor. 11 : 13 ; Rev. 2 : 2), twice 
of Barnabas (Acts 14 : 4, 14), once of a man and woman 
probably (Rom. 16 : 7), twice of common messengers (2 Cor. 
8 : 23 ; Phil. 2 : 25), once of Paul and two of his companions 
(i Thess. 2 : 7), and once of '' James the brother of the Lord " 
(Gal. I :i9) ;* from all which we are to infer that " apostle" like 
presbyter (Acts 2:17;! Pet. 5:5); and like deacon (Jo. 2:5,9), 

* Perhaps it is not altogether certain that this James was not the son of 
Alpheus, and, therefore, from the first, one of the twelve. 



CHAPTER I. 15 

and V^t church (Acts 19 : 32, 40), and like spirit (Lu. 8 : 55), 
and like flesh (Lu. 24 : 39), had not left their primary mean- 
ing and hardened altogether in the Greek into ecclesiastical 
terms, but that they had done so enough to be usually definite, 
and that Paul was " called to be an apostle " in the sense of 
being one of fourteen men 'designated by Christ to be "eye- 
witnesses of His majesty." In all other senses they were official 
^''elders " (i Peter 5 : i), instructed by God to make elders of 
others (i Tim. 1:6), but not instructed to make apostles^ even 
though hundreds of men had seen their common Master. 

"Having been set apart." Commentators have lost much 
by not studying this word in connection with that translated 
'■''declared''' in verse fourth. 'Opt'Cw coming from hpoq di bound- 
ary, means to bound off, or fix a limit. It occurs eight times 
in the New Testament, and in every case means to determine 
or deter77iine up07i {terminus, lijnit). The word is so important 
that we will quote every case. " The Son of Man goeth as it 
was determined" (Lu. 22 : 22, E. V.). " Him being deliv- 
ered by the determinate counsel " (Acts 2 : it,, E. V.). '' It is 
He which was determined upon (ordained E. V.) of God to be 
the judge of quick and dead" (Acts 10 : 42). •' The disciples 
determined to send relief" (Acts 11 : 29, E. V.). " Hath de- 
termined the times before appointed " (Acts 17 : 26, E. V.), 
" A day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by 
that man whom He hath determined upon (ordained, E. V,, 
Acts 17 : 31). "Who was determined on as God's Son (de- 
clared to be the Son of God, E. V.) in power" (Rom. i : 4). 
" Again, He determines upon (limiteth, E. V.) a certain day " 
(Heb. 4 : 7). It will be noticed that it is translated (E. V.) 
but once declared, and that under an obvious theological bias, 
being never so understood in the Septuagint, and really without 
any warrant in the general usage of the language. And yet to 
say " appointed'' would be too far from the meaning of bpi(,u, A 
boundary is sttfor reasofis. " Appointed the Son of God " would 
be too naked. " Detertnined upon " is the v^ry word, and 
agrees with the speech of Gabriel, — " Therefore " — as though 
there were intrinsic reasons, apart from mere appointment — 



i6 ROMANS. 

" Therefore " — because " the Holy Ghost shall come upon 
thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee ; 
therefore, also, that holy thing which shall be born of thee 
shall be called the Son of God " (Matt, i : 35). Let it be 
noticed farther \h.2X predestined (E. V.) is the same verb com- 
pounded with a preposition. Determined upon beforehand (irpo) 
is the meaning. Predestined is a little too arbitrary, like 
appointed. " Whom He did foreknow, them He also did deter- 
mine upon beforehand" (not predestinate E. V., 8 : 29). The 
word is a delicate one, and unites the ideas of appointment 
and of reasons for it, just as exist in the fixing of a boundary. 
Now it is this opiC"? with a different preposition before it, 
viz. cTTo, out from among ^ or away from, that we are concerned 
with at present. It was fitting that Paul should have a differ- 
ent description from his Master. Christ " was determined 
upon as God's Son " at once (aorist), and without any calling 
out from among the wicked. Paul had been [perfect) airo 
determined upon, that is bounded off , or set apart, called out from 
very bad relations, and that not at a single stroke (like Christ), 
such as the aorist would express, but by successive fixings of 
his case [perfect tense), not only " from (his) mother's womb " 
(Gal. I : 15), where this word a(i)opiC,cj is also used, but under 
Gamaliel, and on the way to Damascus, and in successive 
stages of divine preparation. ^^ Separated'' (E. V.) would do 
very well, but it is awkward English, and still more awkward 
where it speaks of being *' separated from my mother's womb " 
(Gal. i: 15). 6'<?/ ^/^r/ will answer everywhere. Set apart the 
righteous from the wicked (Matt. 13 : 49) ; set them apart 
from each other (Matt. 25 : 32) ; set apart the sheep from the 
goats [ib.) ; set you aside or apart (Lu. 6 : 22) ; set apart for 
me Barnabas and Saul (Acts 13 : 2) ; set the disciples 
aloof or apart (Acts 1919); be ye set apart (2 Cor. 
6:17); he who set me apart from my mother's womb ; put 
himself aloof or set himself apart (Gal. 2 : 12) ; these are all 
the nine instances of d^op/c^J in the N. T. Greek, and answer 
perfectly to show that Paul meant that he had been " set apart " 
from other wicked men to preach the gospel. 



CHAPTER I. 17 

" A Gospel of God." We do not say " a good message of 
Gody' because the word had hardened enough into what was 
technical to make that awkward in many passages. " Accord- 
ing to my good message " (2 : 16), or " the good message which 
I have good messaged " (i Cor. 15 : i), or "the good message 
of the circumcision " (Gal. 2 : 7), are sentences which show 
that the word had escaped from its original simplicity. " A 
gospel of God " means a gospel given by God (and not a 
gospel about God), as will appear in the succeeding verse. 

2. As to which He announced Himself before by His 
prophets in holy scriptures. 

^^ Promised" (E. V.) would do well enough were it not for 
the unhappy English. " Glad tidings promised" is not just the 
expression we would choose. An annu?iciation before announced 
is more what would come under a Grecian's eye, as the verb 
and the substantive are from the same dyyeAXw. But the verb 
is in the middle, and naturally means announced himself. 
As announcing oneself as to a thing which is of a promissory 
sort, is virtually to promise it, it is used that way (E. V.) 
thirteen times in the N. T. On the other two occasions of its 
use the word professing is brought in (E. V.), " which some 
professing have erred concerning the faith " (i Tim. 6 : 21) ; 
"professing godliness" (i Tim. 2 : 10). The compound with 
TT/oo (before) which occurs but once, and that in the present 
passage, may very properly, therefore, be rendered (" the glad 
annunciation) as to which He arinounced Himself before (or 
which He announced for Himself before), by His prophets in 
holy scriptures." That there should be no article before 
^^ scriptures" was not unnatural, for it was not every scripture 
that foretold the gospel. But we are to notice how the ample 
predictions which there were, are thus early announced, and 
everywhere brought out by Paul, to confirm his representations. 

His book might be called. The Gospel of Christ proved out 
of the Old Testament Scriptures. 

3. Concerning His Son, the Jesus Christ our Lord, who 
came into being of David's seed through flesh. 

"Concerning." Scripture is often ambiguous, and care- 



i8 ROMANS. 

lessly and purposely so when the ambiguity makes not the slight- 
est difference (vs. 6, 17 ; 5 : 5, 17 ; 13 : 14 ; i6 : 2). The gospel 
" concerning " and the announcing of himself " concerning " 
would amount to the same thing. As the very Greek for 
annunciation {ajyk'KhS) is found in both noun and verb, the 
question as to which the preposition belongs to is not worth 
settling, and the comments as between Lange and Meyer are 
based upon nothing, and could not touch a shade of the 
significance, even if they could be made certain either way. 

"His Son." This great personage Paul announces to be the 
sum of the gospel, and proceeds at once to give a definition 
the most complete in scripture. " The Jesus Christ our Lord 
who." Now we ought to watch every word. For there is 
nothing like them in elaborateness as to the Son of the Father. 
" Who came into being. " He ^^ came into deing " thtn. Let 
us fix the meaning of that verb first of all. It is used seven 
hundred times or more in the New Testament. Therefore 
what we are about to announce is very decisive. In all 
these seven hundred instances, if associated with a nomina- 
tive in the predicate, it means became ; as for example, '* the 
Word became flesh'' If, on the other hand, it be the whole pre- 
dicate itself, it means originated ; as for example " the world came 
to be.'' Its primary meaning is not to be born (so say most 
lexicographers), or, if it is, that has long sunk into a least 
frequent meaning. The text, therefore, is very manageable, 
unless the words that follow in some way alter or specialize 
the sense, which, we may say beforehand, they do not do. 

"Of David's Seed." A common reader would understand 
that the '' Son of God" came into being nineteen centuries 
ago as a descendant of David. If he had heard of the 
'■^Eternal Sonship," he might look into his concordance for 
other sentences that would trace farther back, and these he 
would never find. 

All the words, " Son," with a big S, centre about Nazareth. 
The only trace of what is otherwise is in Daniel (Dan. 3 : 25). 
It is from the lips of a heathen. It is without the article. It 
is not " the Son of God " (E. V.), but " a son of a god." The 



CHAPTER I. 19 

'•'■ gods " of Nebuchadnezzar had been quoted to him in the 
plural (E. v.), see the twelfth verse, but a few sentences 
before. There is not a single passage of the Old Testament 
Scriptures that asserts a " Son " then existing, or even alludes 
to such a person in all those four thousand years. 

God was existing ; and we long for the opportunity when 
we can explain this. And God became incarnate in the child 
of Mary. But God was not before incarnate, and therefore 
had no earlier " 6'^;z." Or, rather (that we may not hasten 
anything), it appears by this third verse, that there came into 
being of the seed of David, nineteen centuries ago, " tAe Jesus 
Christ our Lord^' who therein and thereupon became '■'■the 
Son of God'' 

"Through flesh." '■'■ According to the flesh'' (E. V.) would 
answer very well, but it is more awkward than through^ and is 
still less eligible when applied to the Spirit (v. 4). One sense 
of Kara is " by virtue of," so says Robinson ; though, as he 
represents, " the idea of accordance lies at the bottom ; " as 
for example "through ignorance" (E. V., Acts 3 : 17). "Is 
it lawful for a man to put away his wife for (/card) any cause ? " 
(E. v.. Matt. 19 : 3). " Through flesh," therefore, means, 
that by His sinful mother He became the child of David, and 
" Mr^2^^/z " this fleshly origin came into being nineteen cen- 
turies ago. 

Though there is no passage in the Old Testament that 
speaks of the " So7t " as anciently existing, yet it is time now to 
say that there is a passage that speaks of the " Son," and that 
a very celebrated one. It is quoted three times by the apostle 
(Acts 13 : 33 ; Heb. i : 5 ; 5 : 5). "Thou art my Son ; this 
day have I begotten Thee" (Ps. 2 : 7). Here is a distinct 
assertion of a begetting at a certain time. All agree that it is 
a Messianic prophecy. Its prophet-guise i7t situ is quite spec- 
tacular. No one doubts that. Men have made endless efforts 
to get rid of this sentence. Some have said that ^^ begotten " 
means exhibited or manifested (Calvin on Ps. 2:7). Some 
fly to two begettings, one eternal and one in Nazareth, imagin- 
ing, therefore, two Sonships (Hodge, Syst. Theol., Vol. i : 



20 ROMANS. 

p. 474). Some expound thus : — " Thou art My Son, this dajr 
I am Thy Father " (Alexander) ; others, " Thou art My Son ; 
this day I declare it " (Calvin), making the begetting a 
mere asseverance. Some say that Acts 13 : '^2^ spoils the 
argument for a local and temporal creation (Meyer, Calvin),, 
still another objector overthrowing this last by showing that 
the " resurrection " there spoken of is not the rising on the 
third day, but really the raising up or originating that 
we are now contending for (Hodge). Which comments 
might be pardoned if there were strong scriptures to make 
them necessary ; but, as will be seen in the next verse, when 
the time might seem to have come to speak of the Spirit as. 
distinct from the flesh, or an eternal Sonship as distinct 
from that in Galilee, the trencf is the other way, and the 
very look of the English shows the violence of the steps 
against it. 

V. 4. For example, opiaOkQ does not mean " declared" (E. V.). 
When ^^ begotteji'' (Ps. 2: 7) is tortured into '''- inanifested'* 
(Calvin), just as ^^ except'' (Gal. 2 : 16) is strained into ^^ but'* 
(E. V.) in a case already mentioned, the very violence of the 
strain should turn us against the commentator. 'Op/C^ means 
bounding off or determining^ and the very attempt to under- 
stand it as ^'■declared" (E. V.) should awaken our full suspi- 
cion. The fourth verse thoroughly agrees with the third. 
For while the third announces that the '' Son " originated, the 
fourth favors that view by announcing, not that He was 
^^ declared'' (E. V.) what He had been ages before, or, to take 
in the whole view, not that He was born " Son " in one nature 
and ^^ declared" Son in another, as though He had really been 
that from all eternity, but, according to the simple Greek, that 
He came into being such as He was by a fleshly birth, and was 
^'' determined upon" (Acts 11 : 29, E, V.) or ^'■ordained" (Acts 
10 : 42, E. V.) " Son of God" in certain ways or through cer- 
tain agencies, as a thing happening in time, and justifying the 
language, ** This day have I begotten Thee." 

'Opiodeic, therefore, receiving this interpretation, and beings 
refused the sense " declared" (E. V.), as being altogether too 



CHAPTER I. 21 

biassed, and of design,* there remain the other expressions of 
the fourth verse, which singularly agree with the idea of a 
" determined upon " or appointed Sonship. 

4. Who was determined upon as God's Son, in power, 
through a Spirit of holiness, by a rising of those dead. 

Before we discuss these words, let us say particularly what 
we imagine them to establish. They do not affect the question 
whether Christ is God. For, if the one personal Jehovah 
descended upon Mary, and was begotten into her Son, that is 
as much a Godhead as for a Second Person in a Trinity so to 
descend and be begotten. It would be fatal, of course, to a 
Trinity, and fatal to the use of the word Son before the incar- 
nation. But the Deity of Christ, which is the great fulcrum 
of salvation, would be more rather than less. Let that be well 
remembered. 

Moreover, we should not be departing from the general 

* Olshausen has a very tell-tale note on this expression. "The choice 
of the word 6pLC,eadaL, however, has led several ancient and modern com- 
mentators to understand the words in an entirely different sense. This 
word, in the language of the N. T., means 'to fix, determine, choose for 
some purpose' (Lu. 22 : 22 ; Acts 2 : 23 ; 10 ; 42 ; 17 : 26). From this has 
been derived the translation, ' God has chosen, appointed Him to be the Son 
of God,' which would at once lead to the Jewish view of Christ's subordi- 
nate character, viz. , that he was the Son of God, not in his essential being, 
but only by God's election {EKkoyrj) (Justin Martyr, Dial. c. Tryph. Jud. 
p. 267). In close connection with this stands another interpretation, which 
makes dptadivrog identical in meaning with Trpoopiadevrog, a word which 
Epiphanius has even admitted into the text. Accordingly the expression is 
translated prcedestinatus est, and referred to God's decree with respect to 
the incarnation (Iren. adv. haer. 3 : 22, 23. August, de praedestin. sanct. 
c. 15). But both views, to say nothing of the untenableness of the former, 
on doctrinal grounds must be rejected [!] ; because, from the connection, it 
is manifestly not the decree of God, but the proof before men of Xt's Divine 
Sonship that is here in question. No other course, therefore, remains but to 
take opii^eadaL in the sense to declare, to exbibit as something. * * * * 
There is indeed some difficulty in proving that opi^eadai is ever used in 
this sense. For dpi^u means originally to define the limits, opL^eaOai, to 
determine limits for one's self, i. e. , to determine. A/'o passage in which it 
means directly declarare, ostendere is to be found either in the profane or 
scriptural writings. ^^ 



2 2 ROMANS. 

belief that Christ is not God in the sense that the man became 
transmutedly divine. Nobody believes that. Impossible infi- 
nitudes may be imputed to Christ's human nature (Sweden- 
borg, Crosby, Beecher), but, looked at in front, no man says 
that the man becomes God. The uniform doctrine with us 
all is that the man is so united with the God as to become one 
person, and that this composite King blends the two natures 
into one Redeemer. It will be seen how carefully Paul talks 
of the notion of equality. He does not say, speaking of the 
man as he stood in Jewry, that he was ^' equal {iam}) 
with God " (E. v., Phil. 2 : 6). This is a sad translation. 
Paul's langtfage is very express. It ought to have been con- 
sidered. He says, " Being in the form of God ; " which at 
once refers to the human nature of Christ. And then he uses 
very peculiar characterizations of Christ's Deity. Why can 
not we in all fidelity preserve the strict speech ? He does not 
say, " Thought it not robbery to be equal with God " (E. V.) ; 
for that man-part of Christ, which was " in the form of God," 
which could make itself ''of no reputation," which could take 
on " a bondman's form," which could " originate in the likeness 
of men," and, " formed in fashion as a man," could be 
" humbled " and die and be '' exalted," could not be said to 
be " equal i(Loov) with God ; " and, therefore, Paul talks 
just as here in this fourth verse. There are certain " respects " 
in which he is equal, and so, in our present passage, he tells 
most definitely what they are : — "(i) In power, (2) through 
a Spirit of holiness, (3) by a rising of those dead." So that 
most admirable is the wording of the apostle (Phil. 2 : 6) 
where he refuses to say laov, and says ica, or, to trace the 
whole careful inspiration, " Who, being in the form of God, 
thought it not robbery to elvat lea, that there should be 
equal respects with God," that is, precisely as our present 
passage renders it, that a certain born " Son" of the Father 
should be so begotten that the Father should be in Him, and 
that He should be hence ^^ determined on " to be '' God's Son 
(i) i?i poiver, (2) t/iroi/i:;h a Spirit of holiness, (3) ^J ^ resurrection 
of those dead" 



CHAPTER I. 23 

Before we consider these laa or " equal things " respect- 
ively, let us see the amazing similarity of the speech of 
Gabriel. Angels are not verbose (Lu. 2 : 14), and it must be 
seen, therefore, in his short speech what abounding weight 
must be given to " Therefore.'' '' The Holy Ghost shall come 
upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow 
thee" (Lu. i : 35). This is his account of that great act, 
" This day have I begotten Thee," — and then, as the result, 
" Therefore^ Paul has less rhetoric than the angel. But who 
can refuse us the result, — that then and there and " therefore,'' 
that is, specifically, on that sole account, '' that holy thing that 
shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God ? " 

It will be seen that there are two questions imbedded in this 
discussion — one, whether "the Son" is a name of something 
of recent date, or of something born from everlasting ; and 
the other, whether there is such a person, born from ever- 
lasting, as might have that or any other name. The former, 
of course, is not of so much moment. 

It is like the questions already noticed (v. i). What was 
Jesus the name of ? We saw it was the name of the God. Or 
again, what was Christ the name of ? We saw that it was the 
name of the man. And yet, what were they both the name 
of ? They were the name of the God-man ; in the one case of 
the God impersonate in the man, and in the other case of the 
man co-personal with the God : in either case giving no 
slender ground for the atonement, and for the name and for 
the claim of Deity. 

And so in corresponding guise the " Son " is the name of 
the man. As Christ had to wait till a man was actually 
Christos before it could be a name ; so the " S071 " had to wait 
till a Son could absolutely " come to be " (v. 3), and till the 
King could give the name, — " Thou art My Son ; this day have 
I begotten Thee." 

The lesser and more trivial point, therefore, is, what must 
the " Son " be the name of ? 

But the other question transcends the mere name. 

Christ, as the name of the man, could not affect the position 



24 ROMANS. 

that there was an eternal '' Son. " But the " Son " as the 
name of the man destroys it totally. Once satisfy the world 
that the " Son " attained to the name on the plain of Bethle- 
hem, and the figment of the Hypostasis would be miserably dis- 
sipated. Where else could we get it ? Not from God where 
He says, " I will make him my first-born " (Ps. 89 : 27); not 
from Paul where he says, " Determined upon as the Son of 
God ; " not from Christ where He says, " He that hath seen me 
hath seen the Father " (Jo. 14 : 9); and where He really puts 
it out of the question, for He never so much as glimmers about 
a distinctive Person, but says, " I live by the Father " 
(Jo. 6:57): whereas " before Abraham was I am " (Jo. 8 : 58), it 
is because " I and my Father are one "(Jo- 10 '- 30); and then, 
more articulately, " If he call them gods to whom the word of 
God came, and the scripture cannot be broken, say ye of Him 
whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, 
Thou blasphemest, because I said I am the Son of God ? " 
(Jo. 10 : 36). 

Yet Paul was not Socinus. For if the " Son " be God by 
reason of His union with the Father, that is just as much a 
Deity as that there be God by reason of a union with a Second 
Person. In fact it is more. And Paul is not to be impeached 
as failing of a Godhead for his Master, by anything that 
follows in the language of the text. 

Let us proceed to that. 

^'/n power'' Not ^^powe^^fully declared'' (Alford, Beza, 
Tholuck), for the word " declared," which would fit such an 
adverb, itself has to be given up. 'Opt^w never means " de- 
clared." Besides, where do we find even the adverb? 'Ev 
would naturally indicate the respect ^^ m" which the man, 
made God, would be " determined upon " as the Deity. What 
more directly than " in power ? " Christ had a ^^ power " which 
neither the God nor man, if separate, could wield or possess. 
First of all (i) 2i power forejisic. God could not forgive, and 
man could not forgive, in any disjunctive relation ; but man 
laid on the altar, which God could not be, and God, blessing 
the sacrifice, which man could not do, constitute a " Son" that 



CHAPTER I. 25 

is a God-man, such that the " Son " is really more potent than 
the Father, the Father dwelling in the '^ Son," and the " Son " 
-containing more than the Father, viz., the Eternal God and a 
guiltless man, without whom there could be no remission. 
Again (2) there is regenerative power. Man could not wield it. 
Man could not even understand it. And yet God could not 
wield it without the man. It is the God-man that wins the 
possibility of salvation. And, therefore, God delights to give 
a determination to the man. " All power is given unto (Him) 
in heaven and earth "(Matt. 28 : 18). And see how He describes 
it : '' As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to 
the Son to have life in Himself " (Jo. 5 : 26), for " the 
time is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the 
voice of the Son of Man" (Jo. 5 : 25); for " as the Father 
raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son 
•quickeneth whom he will " (Jo. 5 : 21). The man could not 
regenerate, any more than Moses could divide the sea ; and 
yet the man, even more than Moses, can summon the sea to 
open, and has a will, even as human, in the great work of the 
world's turning to God. Again (3) He is sovereign. Mark 
now with great distinctness His three attributes of '■'■power." 
"** Determined upon as the Son of God iii power" and in 
these indispensable particulars, first, in forensic power, 
which the Father could not possess without Him ; 
second, in regenerative power, which sprang directly from foren- 
sic work, and, thirdly, in power as a King, travelling the 
length of the statement that " all things were created for Him" 
(Col. i: 16) ; endorsing the title of " head over all things, to 
the church " (Eph. i: 22), and making it signally the truth, and 
that even of the man Christ, that not a syllable of recorded 
fact, not even in the universe of worlds, could at all have been 
written down, except as it met the mind and gratified the pur- 
pose of Christ our King and our Redeemer. 

So then for the first count in the Sonship, viz., i7i ^^ power.'' 
But " determining upon " a " So7i " required more than a mere de- 
cree. It did not do to say, (i) The man shall have such 
'^^ power " in court, and (2) the man shall choose His saints, and 



26 ROMANS. 

(3) the man shall rule the universe. The apostle hurries up 
with another specification. Christ had to be prepared. Incar- 
nation was not itself an act in such a sense as that the God 
had to be transfused into the man. The scheme is impossible 
by which some men give God's infinity to the Son of Mary ;, 
but, before the man could be one with the Father, the man 
himself must be prepared. Incarnation may be by mere de- 
cree. For God cannot be personate in man except by an ordi- 
nance of heaven, and an eternal oath that links the two na- 
tures into one. But man has to be lifted toward God. I need 
not tarry upon the secular gifts. Neither Gabriel nor Paul sees 
fit to notice them. Their enthusiasm is all for character. 
Christ with them is a lost man, I mean by heritage (Zech. 3 : 
2; 9: 9). He isachild of Adam (i: 3 ; Lu. 3: 38). He bears upon 
His face the marks of " infirmity" (Heb. 5 : 2). He is *' tempted " 
(Heb. 4: 15), and, beyond all doubt, tempted to sin (Matt. 4: 
I, etc.). The torture that this begets becomes our ransom 
(Heb. 5: 7); the victory, our retreat ; and Gabriel and Paul, 
therefore, put at the very front that marvel by which the man, 
curst by descent, is gotten ready for, as God, by a moral rescue 
from His state by nature. Look at both their speeches. Paul's 
is the least special, " Through a Spirit of holiness "; but 
Gabriel sounds it forth as plainly as it could be uttered, " The 
Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the 
Highest shall overshadow thee ; therefore also that thing, be- 
gotten holy, shall be called the Son of God " (Lu. i: 35). 

Righteousness, contrary to the nature of Mary, is necessary 
to the person of Christ ; and, therefore, His struggle to main- 
tain it is His great battle, and His being '' detertiiined upon " as 
" Son " is in reward, so the Bible often tells us, of " the travail 
of His soul " (Is. 53: 11), and His '' obedience unto death " 
(Phil. 2: 8), and His overcoming to the very end (Rev. 3: 21). 
"Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him and given Him 
a name which is above every name " (Phil. 2: 9). " It became 
Him to make the captain of (our) salvation perfect' thro' suf- 
fering " (Heb. 2: 10). He "overcame and is set down with 
(His) Father in His throne" (Rev. 3: 21). This does not 



CHAPTER I. 27 

derogate from the incarnation, any more than our struggle ta 
be saved derogates from our saintship which was decreed be- 
fore the foundation of the world. 

But, now, there is a third count. Not only was Christ de- 
termined upon first " in power " and, second, "through " that 
which made possible " thepower^' viz., His Christ-ship or anoint- 
ment by the Spirit ; but third, ek or ^* out oi " the results of all 
this, viz., the object of His Messiahship in " a rising of those 
dead." 

And here Paul sheds light upon that word as used often in 
Holy Scripture. When Peter says, " by the resurrection of 
Jesus Christ" (i Pet. 3: 21), he means much more than His 
bodily rising. We would make the body a horrible idol if we 
treated it with all the sentences on the rising of the dead. 

Therefore Paul, when he goes on to his third clause, " IV/io 
was determined upon as Gods Son (i) in power (2) through a Spirit 
of holiness (3) by a rising of those dead'' is infinitely far from 
merely treatmg of the " resurrection " (E. V.). 

Christ, as Mary's son, would have been born dead (Eph. 2 : 3). 
There is no reason to suppose that He would not have inher- 
ited from His mother. The angel signalizes the grace in " that 
thing begotten holy " (Lu. i : 35), and Paul connects the action 
of the Spirit with the rising of the dead. 

Now this agrees with the whole testimony of Scripture. 
Christ is said to be " a dead man according to the flesh 
(i Pet. 3 : 18). We are "quickened together with Christ " (Eph. 
2:5). He is spoken of as " redeemed " (Heb. 9 : 12) ; and, in 
explanation of it, as " offering for Himself and for the errors of 
the people " (Heb. 9 : 7 ; 5 : 3). He is said to be " the first be- 
gotten from the dead " (Rev. 1:5); to be " separated from sin- 
ners " (Heb. 7 : 26), and "to (be saved) from death" (Heb. 
5 : 7). We are told that He was " tempted " (Heb. 4:15) ; that 
He " resisted unto blood " (Heb. 12:4), that He was " compassed 
with infirmity " (Heb. 5 : 2). We are informed in direct assev- 
erance that He was" quickened by the Spirit" (i Pet. 3 : 18). 
And we can put together but one consistent proposition, viz.. 
that He was from Adam. Our Saviour was not a creature 



28 ROMANS. 

foisted in upon our family, but was a descendant of our race 
(Heb. 2 : i6), and therefore had to be generated "holy " (Lu. 
I : 35), or, as the Bible calls it, " raised from among the dead " 
(Rom. 6:4); and this agrees with all the wonders of the narra- 
tive. He must be " tempted " and " infirm " and have a horrible 
fight with wickedness. This tempting must be His torture, and 
He must come out of' it unscathed. If He sin, we are ruined. 
That fight in the Wilderness, and the blood of the Garden, and 
the shriek of His last despair, must all be passed, and He must 
be " holy, harmless, undefiled " and entirely incorrupt. And, 
to make Him all this. He was born miraculously of a woman 
by the agency of the Holy Ghost. As we are regenerate by 
the Spirit, He was generate in the very womb. He was born 
having infirmity, and God gave Him no such supply of Him- 
self as made it an easy victory. At times He was almost 
abandoned (Matt. 26 : 41 ; 27 : 46 ; Heb. 5 : 7). And this 
whole thing, including His body, is His " resurrection from 
among the dead" (Heb. 6:2; Phil. 3 : 11 ; i Pet. 1:3; 

3 '- 21). 

Now when Paul says, " Throitgh a Spirit of holiness^ by a ris- 
ing of those dead,'' he is answering the question of the " there- 
fore " of the angel Gabriel. " Determined upon as God's 
Son in power, through a Spirit of holiness ; " and marked as 
having such power not simply by His own rising from spiritual 
death, but, more signally, by the raising of others : — " The 
Son of God in power, through a Spirit of holiness, by the rising 
x>f those dead.'' 

5. By whom, we received grace and apostleship for His 
name, in order to an obedience of faith, in all the nations ; 
6. Among whom are ye, also, called ones of Jesus Christ. 

"By" (E. v.), causal as well as instrumental. He being 
God as well as man, the "grace" was "by" Him as well 
as through Him. " Through whom " (Re.), therefore, would 
be too narrow a sense. 

"We." Not '' we," all the apostles, nor ^^ we," all gracious 
persons, for Paul is speaking of a special embassage to Gen- 
tiles. But " we," Paul, a change from singular to plural which 



CHAPTER I. 29 

may be seen in any language. "Received." Both "grace" 
and " apostleship " with Paul ^trt^^ received'* ab ictu, and, 
therefore, explain the aorist on this occasion. 

"For His name " (E. V.). "For the sake of His name" 
(see Revision) is too general, 'ritep in its primary sense, 
means over. In its first metaphorical sense it means over in 
the sense of defence or shelter j then, in behalf of. That is its 
meaning here. Paul's apostleship was ''for " Christ, and, to 
express it more definitely still, for his " name " or honor in the 
world ; a most thorough counterpart to which characterization 
is that earliest account by his Master, " A chosen vessel unto 
Me, to bear My name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the 
children of Israel " (Acts 9 : 15). 

" In order to an obedience of faith." Paul is noted for 
his single sentences. Ot all the teachers of divinity he con- 
centres the most. Of the gospel he just gives but one sub- 
ject, — " concerning His Son / " (v. 3). Of salvation he has 
sought him out one careful expression. We " are justified by 
faith." In that dreadful chapter where election is to be vin- 
dicated (Rom. 9), he has but one reply, and when we come to 
examine it, it is the most perfect possible. And now in three 
vocables he is to tell the object of his apostleship. We 
must be very careful with such dense speech. It is not 
'''for an obedie?tce to the faith " (E. V., Alford). The margin 
of King James implies that this is doubtful interpolation. 
It is not " obedience as the result of faith " (Barnes, 
Stuart), for that could only be admitted through the de- 
fault of the more simple rendering. But, like a crown of 
thorns, or a grove of trees, it is an obedience which consists 
of faith. Paul talks this way in other passages. He speaks 
of a " holiness of truth " (Eph. 4 : 24, E. V., 7narg.), which evi- 
dently means a holmess which is "truth in the inward parts." 
" A breastplate of faith " (i Thess. 5 : 8), or " a shield of faith " 
(Eph. 6:15), or " a hearing of faith " (Gal. 3 : 2, 5), or " a right- 
eousness of faith" (4 : 13), all mean a breastplate or a shield 
or a hearing or a righteousness which consists in faith ; and 
this agrees with all the teaching of the apostle. There is a 



30 ROMANS. 

superstition of modern times which a false view of Paul vastly 
confirms, which makes faith, like sacrifice, like absolution by 
the priest, like the circumcision of the ancient ritual service, 
like the sacraments of our own time, a means of supplanting 
the " obedience " of the pious. Paul was loud in rebuke of this. 
He calls it '' another gospel." Taking the form of it in his 
day, viz., circumcision, he traces it to an aversion to this very 
thing " obedience^ ^' For neither they that are circumcised 
keep the law " (Gal. 6 : 13), but desire to have you circum- 
cised " only lest they should suffer persecution by the cross of 
Christ " (Gal. 6:12). We do not sufficiently probe this pas- 
sage (Gal. 6). It is not " for the cross " (E. V.), but " by the 
cross." The cross is the persecuting agency by whose smart 
and sacrifice we are scared away, and Paul adopts it in this 
sense ; — " Circumcision availeth nothing, nor uncircumcision, 
but a new creature" (Gal. 6 : 15), and he says (not glorying 
in the cross as we would speak of glorying in the gospel, but 
glorying in the cross as a cross, that is as demanding pamful 
and self-denied " obedience "), " God forbid that I should glory 
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby the world 
is crucified unto me and I unto the world " (Gal. 6 : 14). So 
then " obedience'' is that obedience of a changed nature which 
consists in ^'' faith;'' and as we shall have much to do with 
that, we may as well at once be entirely specific. 

We have seen the tendency of Paul, nay of all the men who 
have been inspired, to wrap up a whole account of things in a 
single expression. A whole account of things in gospel changes 
would be thus : First, born in sin. Second, sin incurable. 
Third, angels, having no Redeemer, perpetual sinners. Fourth, 
men, blessed with a Redeemer, capable of salvation. Fifth, 
idiots and infants, dying in that condition, saved without faith. 
Sixth, others, never. Seventh, salvation, being moral, God 
pleased that that moral salvation shall begin in this world. 
Eighth, that moral salvation everywhere pressed, and called 
repentance, conversion, regeneration, justification, quickening, 
wakening and all the thousand names in which the work is 
shown in us or by us. But ninth, inasmuch as it is not caus- 



CHAPTER I. 31 

ally by us, I mean in the higher sense of cause, forasmuch 
as a change of heart is hke the creation of a heart in the 
beginning, God pleased only to create when we seek the work 
of Him ; and, tenthly, when we do honor to the work by seek- 
ing in the name of the Redeemer. This last may be very 
imperfect ; for Abraham and the awakened Peter must have 
known little of Christ ; but all the more therefore have we 
need of ^'- obedience ^ Blessed is he who has the more ^^ obe- 
dience^'' even if he has the less doctrinal training. For, like 
Cornelius, I may have never heard of Jesus ; yet if I believe 
in God, and without understanding of His methods, believe in 
Him as Himself a rescuer in my wickedness, who shall say I 
may not be pardoned ? It is not of works, for who ever by 
mere teaching worked his way into the kingdom ? It is not of 
grace in such a way as to answer for me without the cross of 
the Redeemer. It is not of nature in such a way that I can 
rise to it by human powers. But it is of seeking, and that 
not of myself, but as of the oak or the vine, by a power lead- 
ing me to grope for maintenance in the soil provided. 

This is a long story, and, as I say, the apostle makes it 
short. He tells all this by the word '■'faith'' And we must 
pack the word as we would a trunk. There is a common faith, 
under which a million of times a sinner starts to ask and does 
not persevere. There is a saving faith, which simply tells the 
story when he does persevere, that is when this great act of 
'•'■obedience^" which consists in asking, seeking, does really 
begin to seek, namely, out of the true motive, penitence, and 
out of the true drawing, viz., by the loveliness of Christ, which 
then for the first time begins to dawn upon the mind. The 
faith, hence, that saves the soul is not that which resorts to 
Christ out of a selfish terror (though the Bible tries to wake 
up even such a faith, Jude 23, and that, persevered in, may 
lead to the other), but it is the faith which the soul attains 
when the lower sort of faith is striven in, so that it begins to 
work its effect on God ; when, therefore, a moral light enters 
the soul ; when, therefore, a whole group of other graces begin ; 
when seeking, which is but another name for faith, goes on 



32 ROMANS. 

from moral motives ; and when we are able to arrive at this 
conclusion, that, whereas seeking became the great thing com- 
manded for the sinner, seeking or '''■faith " became the great 
" obedience ; " so that " obedience " is of the very nature of 
^'- faith " before it can be imagined at all to save. To put 
it plainly, faith must become moral before it can be con- 
sidered a saving grace. 

Now one caution before we leave the subject. Common 
faith is a grace ; that is, in a lower sense, it is the gift of the 
Holy Spirit. And in this commoner meaning it is a saving 
grace. For unless a man is stirred up by selfish terror to seek, 
he is not, as a usual thing, ever delivered. Ten thousand men 
who have had this faith have perished. Saving faith is that 
which saves. And though this other faith saves in a certain 
previous and prefatory sense, yet the man is not saved when he 
has it. All men have had it who were well raised. The faith that 
saves is that actual vision (2 Thess. 2: 10), which shares with 
love and patience the moral light of the regenerated man. 

"In all the nations." We call unchristian nations heathen, 
which is the Greek word for " nations " simply Anglicized. 
The Jews, looking upon this same word in the Greek, though 
it is the commonest word for " nations," rarely understood it 
that way, but understood it of their sort of heathen, viz., of 
men not Jews. The Latins managed the thing better. They 
took their word '^ ?zations," viz., gentes, and altered it a little, 
and called men not Romans Gentiles, and then the Romans,when 
they became Jews or Christians, took this word for those not so. 
And finally into our English, through Jerome and other transla- 
tors, there came the word Gentiles, and the Greek word for 
" nations " is translated " Gentiles " all through the New Testa- 
ment. 

Nevertheless sometimes it is translated ^''nations." This, 
impulsively, we might imagine a mistake. It is translated 
" (^^/z/Z/^j-" just below (v. 13). But while the vast majority 
of sentences require the translation " Ge7itiles," the present 
text, for example, is justly different. Let us examine other 
instances. "Go teach all Gentiles" (Matt. 28: 19) would not 



CHAPTER I. 35 

do for a moment. " Before Him shall be gathered all Gen- 
tiles" (Matt. 25:32) would be equally unhappy. While, on 
the other hand, to talk of "Jews and nations" (Gal. 2: 15), 
or of going to the nations (Acts 18: 6), or "being in time 
past nations " (Eph. 2: 11), would show with what exceeding 
fitness the same word has been translated differently, so long 
as we had the means of doing it. " Among all the nations^'' 
therefore, is truer to the apostle's appointed mission than 
" among all the Gentiles'' 

"Calledonesof Jesus Christ" gives no inconvenient am- 
biguity. The genitive of possession and the genitive of effi- 
ciency are equally in place. Where both are true, the Holy 
Ghost would have little care to be particular about either. It 
is to these " called ones " that Paul now addresses his epistle. 

7. To all the beloved of God, called to be holy, who are 
in Rome. Grace to you and peace from God our Father, 
and Lord Jesus Christ." 

" To all the beloved of God." '' To all who are in Rome " 
(E. V.) is one of those slight errors of translation which we 
have already noticed in the inscription to this epistle. It is 
not The Epistle to the Romans, but The Epistle to Romans, 
that is, to certain men of that particular city. And now he tells 
to what men. " To all the beloved of God, called to be holy, who 
are in Rome.'' 

" To be holy." We have already seen how the Greek for 
" nations " may have a distinct translation where the Latin or 
the English may furnish it. And so we have Christ for An- 
ointed, and deacon for servant, and Ghost for Spirit, sometimes 
wisely, and sometimes, as in the last instance, without any very 
good effect. " Saints " (E.V.) in the present clause is but an 
adjective, the Greek for ^^ holy." It is the plural ay^o^ and 
once in the Bible is translated ^^ holy ones" (LXX. Dan 4: 17). 
We are convinced that saints is an improvement, like Gentiles 
for nations, or Christ for Anointed j that is, when a word hard- 
ens into what is technical (as Slcikovoq becoming deacon), it is 
better, when it comes into a fresh language, to give it a voca- 
ble by itself ; just as it is better to speak of " a collection for 



34 ROMANS. 

the saints," than a " collection for the holy ones " (i Cor. i6: i), 
or to speak of "the saints and widows" (Acts 9:41), or 
of washing "the saints' feet" (i Tim. 5: 10), rather than to 
insist upon the translated adjective. Yet when it appears 
merely as an adjective, without the awkwardness of ^^ the holy " 
or " the holy ones," it seems better to preserve the simplest 
idea. 

"Who are in Rome." We fix a period here, not a colon. 
The sentence terminates. Paul finishes here the address of 
his epistle. 

" Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Lord 
Jesus Christ." This is a new paragraph. It is not of much 
importance, but even the Revisionists mistake the fashion of 
the East. John reveals it more perfectly (3 John i). He 
^ives the address without any salutation at all. And in 
his second epistle, by a better reading of the Revisionists, he 
gives it thus, " Grace, mercy, peace shall be with us." Neither 
grammar, therefore, nor the custom of the people, forbids the 
punctuation as we have given it. Paul to certain Ro7Jians ; 
so far the address ; and then " Grace to you and peace " as a 
self-contained and independent form of greeting. 

" Grace,'' a usual word for mercy to sinners, though in a wider 
sense it has been vital to Gabriel as much as to the redeemed. 
" Peace,'' the salaam of the East ; in those stormy times, a 
most expressive salutation. No wonder it has been borrowed 
into religion. ^^ Father;" so obvious a title for God that 
Paul says that from Him " every fatherhood in heaven and 
on earth is named " (Eph. 3: 15). 

This is the salutation, therefore. That before is the address. 
Then proceeds the epistle : — 

8. On the one hand, first ; I thank my God, through 
Jesus Christ, for you all, that your faith is published 
throughout the whole world. 

" On the one hand, first." The Bible becomes a different 
Bible if we reject every attempt to find mistakes in it. Paul 
has been wonderfully mutilated. Commentators, pressed into 
some strait, have not hesitated to say: This comes from Paul's 



CHAPTER I. 35 

employing an amanuensis (see also Tholuck,Meyer,Rom. 5:12), 
or, Such and such a protasis with no apodosis (Olshausen), 
or, as in the present instance, such and such a fiiv 
i^'- on the one hand'') without any 6k {^^ on the other hand''), 
sprang from Paul's heat and the thronging of his inspired 
teachings. Some of his noblest thoughts have been missed, 
and then buried by this dangerous treatment. How much 
better to imagine that the Holy Ghost meant entirely what 
he wrote. " On the one ha7td, first" and most important of all, 
Paul saw immense advantages to others in the faith of the Ro- 
mans, and ^^ on the other hand" (j^), see verse 13th, ^^ I do not 
wish you to be ignorant, brethren" that I tried hard to get to 
you " that I might have some fruit also in yourselves" The ex- 
tra ««' in this passage (v. 13) is the tell tale particle that is 
quite de trop except for this view. 

" I thank m.y God, througli Jesus Christ, for you all." 
" My God through Jesus Christ " is the reading of some 
commentators (Glockler, Koppe), that is, He who is " my God 
through Jesus Christ." But Rom. 7: 25, where we read, "I 
thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord," and Col. 3: 17, 
'' Giving thanks to God and the Father by Him," and plenty 
of other passages, fix another meaning. Christ stands in a 
peculiar relation to His people ; and as their worship is sin, 
not perfect, He offers it as from Himself, with hope and promise 
of its becoming perfect through His blessed intervention. 

'"'- For you all." The English ^^ for " answers capitally to the 
original v-Ktp ; ^^ for " in every reasonable sense. " For" in 
behalf of , as though "" yoiL" thanked him, and ^^for" directly, 
as though ^^you " were the subjects of the thanksgiving. 

" That your faith is published." We object to the expres- 
sion ''■spoken of" (E. V.). This particular Greek occurs sev- 
enteen times in scripture, and everywhere means preached. 
''Christ \^ preached" says this same apostle (Phil, i: 18); and 
his death (i Cor. 11: 26), and resurrection (Acts 4: 2), are 
preached, using this same word. It sheds light on the fikv 
(" on the one hand ") of which we have just been speaking. '' On 
the one hand" he exalts the ^^ pitblished" benefits of their ac- 



36 ROMANS. 

tive ^^ faith.'' And, as Rome was the centre of the universe, he 
informs them, before he comes to speak " on the other hand'* 
of their own interests, how incessantly he prayed for them,, 
evidently with the apostolic consciousness of how much was ta 
be gained by the '•^published'' example of the metropolitan fol- 
lowers of Christ. This agrees better with the facts. They 
were not '''-spoken of in the way of wide approval ; for when 
Paul actually did come to Rome, he was greeted with the 
statement, " As concerning this sect, we know that everywhere 
it is spoken against " (Acts 28: 22). 

9. For God is my witness whom I serve in my spirit in 
the gospel of his Son, how unceasingly I make mention of 
you, 

10. Always in my prayers making request, if by any 
means, now, at any time, I may, in the will of God, be 
prospered to come unto you. 

"For;" that is, in proof of this, viz., that I am keenly 
alive to the importance of faith at Rome. That he should 
pray everyday for unknown Romans would seem an affectation,, 
considering the number of heathen cities. Hence the oath, — 
God knows I do it. And this confirms the idea of the impor- 
tance with the apostle of Christian examples in the imperial 
stronghold. "God is my witness." Christ's commands are 
to be understood in their substance. He gives a philosophic 
reason for very many of them, and for none a more beautiful 
one than the command, " Swear not at all " (Matt. 5: 34). A 
Christian is to be so God-like as not to suspect himself of 
faithlessness, therefore why the oath ? And this is the " tempt- 
ation " that we might fear to fall into (Jas. 5: 12), a doubt of 
our truthfulness. And yet God swore (Heb. 6: 17), and Paul 
swore, and that in other places (Gal. i : 20). There is to be reason 
in our obedience. The grand principle remains. We are not to 
swear, because we are not to make light of our own veracity. 
" Let your word be yea, yea, nay, nay ; for whatsoever is more 
than these is of the Evil One." 

" Whom I serve." The word usually translated " worship " 
(7r/30£T/cwtw), is not this word, but means to kiss towards, that 



CHAPTER I. 37 

is to kiss the hand to^ and is often imagined to mean such 
technical worship as belongs only to Deity. We have a fault of 
exaggerating such words ; as, for example, the word ordain. 
We imagine that it means a ghostly consecration which estab- 
lishes a minister. Now there is such a consecration ; more, 
however, in the vote of the church than in the laying on of 
hands. And there is a worship that belongs only to the 
Almighty. It is well to remember that a man ought to be for- 
mally ordained, and that God should be exclusively worshiped. 
But it is exceedingly wise to state that there is a word for 
neither except now in our English. The word ordained as official 
in its meaning translates seven different words in Scripture 
(Mark 3: 14 ; Acts, i: 22 ; 14: 23 ; 17: 31 ; i Tim. 2:7; Titus, i: 
5 ; Heb. 5: i ; 8: 3); and never the same word except in a single 
instance. Kissing the hand may be to different persons beside 
the Almighty (Acts 10: 25). Our sole caution is in respect to 
the words. There is a certain sort of worship (though after 
all we mean a certain sort of admiration and of means to ex- 
press it), which belongs properly to Deity, and is but the bald 
recognition of what is unparalleled and supreme in the Most 
High. 

"In my spirit." Here is quite a different word. It did 
acquire a special meaning in the Greek. It is like the word 
'■^ flesh.'' Flesh means any of a dozen things. But it grew 
into the technical significance of all of a man outside of the 
" new man,'' or of the regenerating Spirit. Refinements of the 
taste, which were of the very best, were ^^ flesh" in the lan- 
guage of Paul, if they were not of the new nature. It is not 
certain that 'Kvtvfia was ever used for mind (Jo. Z'-'^)^ ^^^^ is, 
in the New Testament. And it is rarely used for the soul as 
distinct from the body, or for angels either good or wicked. 
But it is usually meant for conscience or our moral part, and 
often for that new conscience which marks the special meaning 
of conversion. 

When, therefore, Paul speaks of serving in the spirit, he car- 
ries us back to the Gospels (Jo. 4: 23). Our Saviour puts all 
this into shape. He tells us, " The true worshiper must wor- 



38 ROMANS. 

ship the Father in spirit and in truth. Spirit is God." Such 
is the order of the Greek. Middleton, with his predicate rule, 
himself acknowledges the pertinent exceptions (Chap. 3: Sec. 
4). " Spirit is God." That is, spirit is the God part of man. 
We are told distinctly so in Paul (i Cor. 14: 25). " Will report 
that God is in you of a truth." He says (Gal. 2: 20), " It is 
not I that live, but Christ that liveth in me." Our Saviour is 
not rash, therefore. He is in analogy with scripture. " Spirit 
is God," and they that worship Him must worship Him in 
the God part, that is "in spirit and in truth." Paul serves in the 
spirit, therefore, when he serves, not in his unsanctified nature, 
but in that moral part which has become occupied with the 
life of God. 

"In the gospel of His Son." What this means the apostle 
has just been stating (vs. 1,3). 

" How unceasingly I make mention of you." Perhaps it 
is more accurate to say, " make memory of you,'' or ^'■cause you 
to be remembered " (see the Greek), and this agrees with the 
favorite punctuation. The English Version is probably wrong 
in running the two clauses together, and making them read, 
'' / make mention of you always iji my prayers ^ There are two 
adverbs " U7iceasingly " and " always j " and there are two verbs, 
'■^ make mention,'' d^xA ^'-making request." This is the outfit for 
separate clauses. And it is probable that the pointing of the 
Receptus is correct. ^^ How unceasingly I remember you," and 
then in that noblest manner, of " making request " for you 
** always in my prayers." 

" If by any means, now, at any time." This is the word- 
ing of a very busy man, who could not long beforehand predict 
when he could do anything ; moreover who recognized dis- 
tinctly the leading, and, in that miraculous age, the very orders 
of Heaven (see Acts 8:29 ; 16: 7 ; 21: 4). This makes "in 
the will of God " more expressive. God had a map for all 
things which wasthe/r^/tV of His ''will." Paul was praying 
that he might " be prospered," not ''have a prosperous 
journey " (E. V.); the word means more generally "prospered" 
(i Cor. 16: 2 ; 3 Jo. 2), or having one's way opened, and it 



CHAPTER. I. 39 

was not so much having his journey prosperous after he had 
set out, as getting prosperously started, that Paul was 
praying for, and, in order to that, that his plan, as the only 
possibility of its being accomplished, might be " in " (not " bf 
E. V.) tht projet or ^^ will of God.'' 

IL. For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you 
some spiritual gift to the end ye may be set firm. 

" Set firm." This is a very important word. Let us study 
it thoroughly. It comes from the root ara, and is reflected 
in such words as stake and sta?id. Indeed it means to set fast 
primarily ; as when we read, '' He set the stone fast in the 
ground " (Hes. Th. 498). The Bible does undoubtedly teach 
that a man must be ^^ set firm" before there can be any cer- 
tainty that he will persevere. Election has nothing to do with 
it. There is an election unto life, as this same Paul instructs 
us ; " for whom He did foreknow He also did predestinate " 
(8 : 29) ; but what has that to do with the question of perse- 
verance ? The Almighty has set His law ; — " He that endureth 
to the end the same shall be saved." Of course if He elects 
He attends to that prerequisite. Nor has 7'edemptio7i any thing 
to do with the question. For men are deeply convicted and 
thoroughly evangelized in all preliminary ways as the fruit of 
a Redeemer, when no one pretends that they are even con- 
verted. Why may not conversion, before men are confirmed 
and settled — as our passage has xl^'-'' set fast" — be equally 
indecisive ? Our Saviour says it is. " They on the rock are 
they which receive the word with joy, which for a while 
believe, and in time of temptation fall away" (Lu. 8: 13). 
Ezekiel is treated with singular disrespect. He tells us 
plainly, " When the righteous turneth away from his righteous- 
ness, all his righteousness shall not be mentioned ; in his 
trespass that he hath trespassed and in his sin that he hath 
sinned, in them shall he die" (Ez. 18: 24). And Paul says, 
'' Enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift and made par- 
takers of the Holy Ghost, if they shall fall away " (Heb. 6 : 
4, 6). He speaks of himself as becoming a cast-away (i Cor. 
9 : 27). And in a sentence ruined by Italics (see English 



40 ROMANS. 

Version) he just tells us sinipliciter, " Now the just shall live 
by faith ; but if he draw back* my soul shall have no pleasure 
in him (Heb. lo : 38). This shows the importance of the 
word GTrjpi^u. It occurs thirteen times in the New Testa- 
ment. We are not to destroy euphony, but " set firm " will 
convey the idea in every instance. " He set His face firm to 
go to Jerusalem" (" steadfastly set, E. V., Lu. 9: 51). " Between 
us and you there is a great gulf set firm " (" fixed," E. V., 
Lu. 16: 26). "When thou art converted" (Peter had been 
converted before) " set firm " (strengthen, E. V.) the brethren" 
(Lu. 22 : 32.) That is, try all of you to be lifted above apos- 
tacy by being '' set fast " in moral strength. Again, this text, 
" To the end ye may be set fast." Again, toward the close of 
the epistle, " Who is of power to set you firm according to my 
gospel." Then to the Thessalonians, "to set you firm" 
(i Thess. 3:2) ; "to the end he may set your hearts firm "(v. 13); 
"and to set you firm in every good word and work " (2 Thess. 
2 : 17) ; "who will set you firm" (3 : 3). Then James adopts 
the expression ; — " Set your hearts firm " (5:8); and Peter, 
using it once in each epistle, " After you have suffered a while 
make you perfect, set you firm (stablish E. V.), strengthen, 
settle you " (i Pet. 5 : 10) ; "and are set firm in the present 
truth" (2 Pet. I : 12) ; John ending with the counsel, "Set 
firm the things that remain that are ready to die" (Rev. 3 : 2). 
This comes as near to being technical as we can easily imagine. 
And the doctrine that emerges has been much neglected. A 
tree may perish when it is a little sapling, especially if it " have 
no root," that is, but little root (Matt. 13 : 6), or grow "among 
thorns " (Matt. 13 : 22) ; but when it becomes a tree, the case 
is different. Paul evidently contemplates a time when there 
is no moral possibility of falling away. And though Solomon 
fell away, and David and Peter, and Peter had to be " con- 
verted'' to resume his state, yet Paul tells the Philippians 
plainly, " Having begun a good work in you, he will finish it 
unto the day of Christ" (Phil, i : 6), yet he spoils it as a text 

* The E. V. has it, *' If any man draw back," putting what it interpolates 
in Italics, 



CHAPTER I. 41 

for creeds, where it always stands first, by making it special 
and really reducing it to this thing of setting fast j for he says, 
It is meet to think this of you all. Why ? Because all men 
persevere ? On the contrary, because ye have been specially 
confirmed ; " I have had you in my heart" {ib. v. 7), having 
■" greatly longed after you in the bowels of Jesus Christ " 
{jb. V. 8) ; and because I, a discerner of spirits (i Cor. 12 : 10), 
have this confidence of your soul's salvation. 

Now this " setting firm " is not a thing for a man to be con- 
fident of, or to be often conscious of in his own condition ; 
but to be striving after. Men, undoubtedly converted, are 
to make their calling and election sure. The stout oak is in 
but slender danger, though humility is of the very sturdiness 
of its safety. Nevertheless, " God is not unrighteous to forget 
our work and labor of love " (Heb. 6 : 10). Paul got past 
the cast-away, and shouted his believing confidence : " I have 
fought a good fight " (2 Tim. 4 : 7) ; "I know whom I have 
believed" (2 Tim. i : 12) ; "I am ready to be offered" 
(2 Tim. 4:6); " Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of 
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give 
.me at that day" (2 Tim. 4 : 8). 

Now, toward this being '' set firm'' Paul enumerates the 
instruments. 

" That I may impart unto you some spiritual gift." This 
of course was chiefly piety. Nothing else would set them firm. 
But we cannot say that it was not also miracle. All the 
■^'-powers'' went under this name oi^^ spiritual'' (i Cor. 12 : i ; 
14 : I, 12). Moreover the imparting was of itself miraculous. 
And we have to go further and say, that piety was added to as 
a gift under the hands of the apostles (2 Tim. 1:6). 

But this leaves us opportunity to explain how all miracles were 
done by men. When Moses brought water out of the rock, he 
did not bring water out of the rock : on the contrary, he was 
cursed for dreaming that he did (Num. 20 : 10). When Christ 
raised Lazarus, the man did not raise him, but the God. When 
Christ stood out of His grave clothes, so that His very turban 
lay where He vanished out of it, " wrapped together in a 



42 ROMANS. 

place by itself" (Jo. 20 : 7), it was not His soul that waked His 
body ; nor His body that rolled back the stone ; nor even His 
angels, physically, though they were said to do it : for we do 
not know where they got their bodies, or whether their God in 
the skies did not extemporize for them flesh, and move the 
stone by His own omnipotence. We really do not know. But 
there is an unnoticed passage in Timothy that sheds wonderful 
light on ail miracle. Paul is speaking of the very thing 
covered by our text, viz., the imparting of gifts. And if we 
will examine the passage, we will find there was little more 
variety of gifts than Paul longed to impart to the Romans. 
'' Neglect not the gift that is in thee" (i Tim. 4 : 14). Now 
certainly that was pious {ib. vs. 18, 19), and miraculous (Acts 
8 : 17), and everything else : and just as we begin to wonder 
that man could act so like God, and the "Presbytery," even 
in that miraculous age, confer such a thing as spiritual increase 
of grace, a sentence falls from Paul which blazes out with light 
back to the beginning of history. " Which was given thee 
by prophecy ! '' (i Tim. 4 : 14). What does that mean ? What 
can be given to a man by prophecy ? Now that Greek Scd is an 
extraordinary particle. If we translate it ^' by'' we often 
obscure everything. " This is He who came by water " (i Jo. 
5 : 6), might featly mean anything better than what the 
English could give as the idea. " By whom also He made the 
worlds " (Heb. i : 2). Why, Paul is speaking of Christ in his 
human nature ! Let us, therefore, plunge into the study of 
dm, and see what this particle can really do. 

Among its numerous meanings it implies the substance of 
that which is done or said. As for example, " He spake by a 
parable" (Lu. 8 : 4). That simply means that " He spake in 
parables," or that " He spake parables." Again, " Nothing is 
common by itself" (14 : 14). There, by the bye, the English 
heaves into sight as having something of the same. Again, 
" Exhorted the brethren by many words " (Acts 15 : 32)^ 
where of course the words were the exhortation. But now, 
coming right up to the case in hand, did sometimes means, not 
the substance, but in a way that can be very clearly stated, the 



CHAPTER I. 45 

necessary accompaniment. " This is He who came by water and 
blood " (i Jo. 5 : 6). He could not come without. Remission 
and cleansing were the great substance of His errand. " We 
walk by faith " (2 Cor. 5 : 7). " Not by the blood of bulls and 
goats " (Heb. 9 : 12). " By the letter and circumcision dost 
transgress " (Rom. 2:27). In all these cases it is not " by 
the blood " or " by the letter " or " by faith " in any usual 
English, but with these as a necessary accompaniment. So of 
Christ it is said (Col. i : 15-18), first, that He " is the image of 
the invisible God," which must of course be talking of His 
human nature ; that He is the " first-born " — " the first-born 
from the dead," and " the first-born of every creature ; " that 
He was '^ before all things," not surely in time, any more than 
that in time He was " the first-born from the dead ; and, next, 
that in Him all things stood together" {ib. v. 17) ; then, 
coming to our particular particle, that " all things were 
created by Him and for Him " in the way of course of necessary 
accompanijnent. " In Him all things stood together," because 
the God that was to be incarnate in Him arranged for that 
final sovereignty as each thing came to be. He builded the 
universe upon Him. '' By Him," in the sense of necessary 
accompaniment, '' all things were created." He was the "first- 
born," because nothing was born except " for Him," and 
nothing was new-born or ''born from the dead," without Him. 
And He " is the beginning," as Augustine explains (see Aug. on 
Jo. 17 : Tr. 105, § 8) in the might of His '' predestiny." He 
was the most conspicuous personage in heaven ; not simply 
for the predestined incarnation, but actually. He did more 
than any personage in heaven, though He was not yet born. 
He did it nobly and splendidly on the base of His intended 
advent. God framed His whole scheme upon Him. And, 
what cannot be challenged for a moment, millions were par- 
doned by the means of a sacrifice that had not yet come into 
being. 

This will all be needed in another part of the epistle ; but, 
for the time being, it explains the imparting Paul is speaking 
of, and how it is done, and in fact the method of all miracles. 



44 ROMANS. 

When Moses struck the rock what did he do to effect the 
marvel ? Of course he had not the slenderest agency in the 
results that followed. When Christ healed the woman He said 
that " virtue had gone out of Him." If that was a sense in the 
man, distinct from the Most High, that was but another 
miracle. When Moses rolled back the waters of the sea, we 
are not to suppose that the man stood in the place of God, in 
such a sense as to budge a particle of the moving water. 
What did he do, therefore ? He did exactly what the 
Presbytery did. He wrought " by prophecy'' Elijah prayed 
for rain (i Ki. 18 : 42, 45) ; ^t^w^ prayed iox Lazarus (Jo. 11 : 
42), and we are to add that in ; but the miracle was given " by 
prophecy ; " that is, before the man dared to act, the God must 
intimate the certainty of a Divine fulfilment. Elijah, with the 
priests of Baal (i Ki. 18 : 19) would need a prophecy that 
God would work ; and even David would hardly have ventured 
against Goliath without doing it ^^ by prophecy j " that is, with 
the " necessary acco7npaniment'' of an intimation from on high. 
Such would have been the case with Paul in any miracle for 
the Romans ; it must be wrought ^'' by prophecy T And he 
expounds this further, for he says : — " According to the 
prophecies that went before on thee, that thou by them 
mightest war a good warfare " (i Tim. i : 18). 

" Impart'' Mtrd is a different preposition from ovv, and 
means amid along with the idea of with. Paul's word has the 
implication of sharing, therefore, or of imparting, as the 
Presbytery did, the like of what they had themselves. 

12. But that is, that in you we may be helped forward 
together by the faith in each, both yours and mine. 

"But" (de) — a very essential little particle. We are not 
to translate "That is" (E. V. & Re.), but '' But that is," the 
force of the " but," being to keep the benefit just spoken of 
within the sweep of the words, *' On the one hand," which cover 
the thought of benefit to others. "On the other hand" he 
is about to come (v. 13) to the idea of ^^ fruit " in themselves. 

"Helped forward together." ^'- On the one hand" he 
wished bright faith at Rome that it might be '■''published" every- 



CHAPTER I. 45 

where, and he longed to set it firm that this Pharos light might 
increase among the nations. Then, furthermore, he wanted it 
bright and steady for its effect upon himself. Paul hesitated 
not a moment to count his own frame of mind important to all 
the world. " Comforted''' (E. V. & Re.). That is not the 
word. ^apaKokkiji means to call near^ to summon. It is the 
word which in the participial shape means the one called near 
or summoned, i.e.^ the Paraclete. Now men are shouted to 
for a thousand purposes, and one of them is to keep up their 
courage. So the word has an inconvenient multiplicity of 
signification: — Called on for help., i.e., entreated (Lu. 15 : 28) ; 
called out to to help themselves., i.e., e7icouraged {^i^h.. 6 : 22); called 
out to to be of good cheer, i.e., comforted (2 Cor. 1:4); called near 
to sta7id for us or defend us., i.e., to be our advocate (i Jo. 2:1); 
and, more rightly still, called near to do for tcs generally^ or to 
be our Paraclete, i.e., to help us (Acts 28 : 20). This was the 
best sense for Paul. To be " comforted" was but a trifle. To 
he ^^ helped forward" viouXd be felt in ^^ all the world" by its 
effect upon the apostle. 

"Together." The natural accusative before the infinitive 
would be ^^ you," as found in the eleventh verse. The two in- 
finitives follow consecutively. But the gw in the latter gives 
us a right to "we." It is not necessary to say "I" (E. V. 
& Re.), for I being with you ^'-comforted" (Re.) makes it nec- 
essary to supply two pronouns ; nor is it correct to say / co77i- 
forted together with you (E. V.), for that throws out " in you," 
a most important element. The E. V. supplies it in the mar- 
gin. The most effective rendering is to be content with " we," 
and then everything is expressed. '' That in you we may be 
helped forward together by the faith in each, both yours and 
mine." 

"On the other hand," (6e) the apostle goes to the 
other side of the result, that he may speak of their personal 
benefit. 

13. On the other hand, I would not have you to be ignorant, 
brethren, how I often purposed to come unto you and was 
prevented hitherto, that I might have some fruit likewise 
in yourselves, just as also in the other nations. 



46 ROMANS. 

"Likewise in yourselves." This "likewise" tells the 
tale of the TvpiJTov fzh (v. 8), and of the 6e (v. 13) ; that is, 
" on the one hand,'' and '* on the other handy His first great 
zeal about Rome was its metropolitan example ; but his sec- 
ond, the fruit " likewise also in theinselves, just as in other na- 
tions." 

14. I am debtor both to Greeks and barbarians, both to 
wise and unwise." 

This was the only sort of indebtedness that Paul acknowl- 
edged. He tells these same people, " Owe no man anything 
but to love one another," (13 : 8), which has been made ridicu- 
lous as forbidding loans : practically, forbidding capital ! Paul's 
imperative is but a strong indicative, as we shall see in loco. 
Meanwhile he acts upon the principle, — All a man can owe to 
others is love. And under this one debt he must preach to all 
men. 

We might pause upon the fact that the spirit of the age made 
little of men not Grseco-Roman, and not refined. 

15. So as concerns my own eagerness, it is to preach the 
gospel to you who are in Rome also. 

Not " as jHuchas in me is " (E. V. & Re.), whatever we might 
infer from Rom. 12 : 18, but literally, " the readiness according to 
myself is to preach etc. j " the reserve being that he is willing, but 
there may be a doubt about the Almighty ; for he has already 
told them that he must be prospered " in the will of God'' to 
come unto them (v. 10). 

" In Rome also." Well, why not ? Reasons throng. First, 
it was a haughty capital. But then he was not " ashamed of 
the gospel of Christ." Again, it was surfeited with new 
faiths. What could he hope for still another ? Much, confi- 
dently ; for his ^^ gospel " was " the power of God unto salva- 
tion to everyone that believes." 

So now he is approaching the centre of his work : — 

16. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; for it 
is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that be- 
lieves, both to the Jew, first, and also to the Greek. 

^^ Ashamed." Practically the gospel was much despised. 



CHAPTER I. 47 

Contemporaneous history hardly mentions Christ. The chief 
notices seem forged (Jos. Ant. C. 3, also Tacitus). Paul all 
along feels the absence of influence (Acts 17 : 12), and eagerly 
longs for metropolitan believers (Phil. 4 : 22). Yet the work 
was among poor saints (Jas. 2 : 5). And, under Nero's sword 
(2 Tim. 4 : 16), he went out into the darkness with the poorest 
hopes humanly which any great leader could have left behind 
him. 

" Ashamed of Jesus ! " 

is a sort of mockery now-a-days. But in Paul's time 
it meant something. 

"It" not ''hey "The power of G-od" is a strong title 
to give to a message, but it is explained in the next verse. It 
cannot be amoq (" he ") that is meant, for the gospel is called 
^^ the power of God'' further on (i Cor. i : 18). Instruments 
are called powers elsewhere (i Cor. 12 : 29). The ''gospel^'' 
like Philip (Acts 8 : 10), " was the great/(:?2£/<?r^/6^^^," because 
it was " unto salvation ; " because it was " for every one ; " 
and because it Yi2i?>for every one that believed. The potenti- 
ality, the universality and the gratuity of the gospel, even though 
in itself it had no power, can discover plenty of meaning in 
calling it " the power of God."" 

This great sentence, one of the most significant in ail the 
epistle, finds its complete unveilment in the seventeenth verse. 
Before we pass to that let us touch an intermediate expres- 
sion : — " Both to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." 

" Go not from house to house " (Luke 10 : 7) had meant 
that they were not to scatter their work, but begin at an ac- 
quired centre, and push their influence out from where it was 
the most. It is a prime rule. Paul always struck for the 
synagogue (Acts 17: i, 2, 17; 18: 4). And so did Christ 
(Luke 4 : 16). Moreover they frequented the temple, and 
made much of its holy services (Matt. 26 : 55). God had 
been building a cradle for two millenniums (Gen. 12 : i). It 
had not been altogether a failure, vile as it was. And there- 
fore it was told them that they were to begin at Jerusalem 
(Lu. 24 : 47). Accountability began that way, and was to be 



48 ROMANS. 

measured similarly, " of the Jew first, and also of the Greek ; " 
and, furthermore, as the justestand most rational conclusion, 
Judaism was more hopeful than Paganism. Salvation would 
spread the faster from Jewish homes. At first it did do so. There 
was to be an "advantage of the Jew" and a " profit of circum- 
cision " (Rom. 3 : i). And, considering the fewness of Israel, 
more of that race were to be brought into the faith than of any 
other of the tribes of men. The rule of results therefore is to 
be, — ^^ Both'' (not forgetting the re, for Paul is everywhere 
throwing Jew and Gentile together) "/^ the Jew first ^*ajid also 
to the Greek y 

17. For in it is the righteousness of God revealed from 
faith to faith ; as it has been written, The r?ghteous from 
faith shall live. 

Under the sweep of this "for" come two important ques- 
tions : (i) what is '-'■ salvation 2 '' (v. i6), and (2), what has 
'^ the gospel " to do with it ? for the forthputting has been very 
strong ; — The gospel is " the power of God j " and it is " the 
power of God unto salvation j " and there is held a monopoly 
by what is called "faith ; " for the gospel is " the power of 
God unto salvation unto every oite that believes.'' 

(i) " Salvation," according to this seventeenth verse, means, 
simply, to be made to live. Nor is this an uncommon 
metaphor. The Bible is full of it. When Adam sinned, he 
died. Death is our grimmest enemy, and life our comprehen- 
sive friend. Rhetoric has seized upon both of them. And 
the apostate man is " dead in trespasses and sins," while the 
saved sinner is " alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." 

But this rhetoric takes on distinctness when we say what this 
"life" is; and Paul answers it perfectly. He says "the 
righteous ^^^// //z;^." It was unfortunate to sdij " The Just" 
(E. v.), for those diversities shake the continuity of a sentence. 
" The righteousness of God " immediately precedes the men- 
tion of " the righteous." We shall see their connection ; though 
now we are engaged about another thing. How can we be said tO' 
" live " when we have no righteousness ? Whoever saw a per- 
fect character ? and whatever is not perfect is of the very 



CHAPTER I. 49 

nature of sinfulness. The very Devil has some character, and 
loves some things in a numbed way that are of the nature of 
virtue. The worst fiend has not reached certain degrees of 
wickedness. And, therefore, we can appreciate the sentence, 
" There is none righteous, no not one." And yet the Bible 
perseveres in talking of '' holy brethren," and-Christ himself 
looks the disciples in the face and says, " Now ye are clean 
through the words that I have spoken unto you " ( Jo. 15 : 3)^ 
In this way we are prepared to understand the apostolic expres- 
sion, — Those ^'' righteous froin faith." We understand it per- 
fectly if we make it absolutely simple. Sin is in its nature incur- 
able. To overcome this nature, we need the power of the Holy 
Spirit. As a law of the kingdom we are to ask for it, and to ask 
for it with more or less clearness in the name of our blessed 
Redeemer. To do this of course requires belief ; else who 
would do it ? and when we do it earnestly, our prayer is heard, 
and the faith with which we are looking to the Redeemer 
becomes suffused with love, and, like any other grace, partakes 
oi ^^ righteousness J '' ox, to express it in commoner language,. 
becomes touched with moral light, like hope and love and all 
the graces of the Spirit. Why should it not be so, seeing that 
it is the fruit of regeneration ? If regeneration be a moral 
change, why should not faith be a moral faith ? and if crying 
out to God be the great duty of the sinner, why should it not 
be moral, like any other duty of the soul ? If ^' all (our) things 
(are to) be done in love " (i Cor. 16 : 14), and yet cannot be, 
till we are converted, why should not faith be '' done in love ?" 
and why should it not only then be saving when, like repentance 
or any other work, it becomes touched by a moral nature ? 

This is surely the thought of the apostle. Abraham had no 
righteousness, but his " faith was reckoned to him for righteous- 
ness" (4 : 9) ; not that it was sure enough righteousness, but 
that it was the beginning of it. Even Phinehas had a righteous 
act "counted unto him for righteousness" (Ps. 106 : 30, 31) ; 
not that it was really righteous, but the beginning of it ; in 
other words it was the first fruits of a new-born nature. And 
not only so, but it was the earnest as well as the first fruits. It 



so ROMANS, 

was the promise of more. And that now distinctly was the 
idea of Paul. " The righteous from faith shall live.'' This is his 
exact description of " salvation.'' Of course it is very condensed, 
but the whole story is told in other places. Christ, having 
borne our guilt, has put within our reach this sort of " i-«/z;<3;- 
tion " (v. i6). We are to pray for it. While we pray for it, we 
are to attack sin all along the line. If we persevere in this we 
will be converted. In being converted there has beamed into 
us the moral light that wakens all graces. Among others our 
very prayer has been wakened. Prayer is but an exercise of 
faith. Our faith, if wakened up, is touched for the first time 
with moral light. In other words it has become saving faith ; 
a genuine act of a new " righteousness j " and we shall " live " 
thereby, not only in the degree that it is " righteous," being 
itself a " righteousness," but as the harbinger of more ; just as 
a little sanctification is a harbinger of more (8 : 23), and a lit- 
tle cleanness of more (2 Cor. 7 : i), and a little quickening of 
more (i Jo. 5 : 4), fulfilling definitely the divine words, 
•** Now the righteous from faith shall live, but if he (not any 
man, E. V.) draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in 
him" (Heb. 10 : 38). 

So much for the first question, What is '^salvation?" It is 
being made to " live " by becoming " righteous ; " not '•'■from " 
a sure-enough '^ righteousness" for that requires our being per- 
fect ; but '"'■from " a dawning *' righteousness ;" that is to say, 
faith, which is itself a beginning of a righteous life, but, what 
is more, the harbinger of one more righteous, on, on, to the 
purity of Heaven. 

So much for the first question. (2) Now for the second. 
What has the ''gospel" (v. 16) to do with all this ? 

The ''gospel " is not the redemption of Christ, but the mes- 
sage of it. " In it," we are told, something is " revealed." What 
is that something ? That is the most important question in all 
the epistle. " In it the righteousness of God is revealed." What 
is "the righteousness of God 2 "* Of course the simplest answer 

* It will be noticed that " power" (v. 16), and " righteousness " (v. 17), 
and " wrath " (v. 18), are all without the article. This is significant ; for 



CHAPTER I. 51 

would be, Just what Gabriel's " righteousness " is, or anybody 
else's. As a general thing this is the safer understanding of 
words, and has, so to speak, priority. In the sentence 
before " the power of God " is spoken of, and in the sentence 
after, ^^ the wrath of God ;'' and so ^^ the righteousness of God" 
has a right to be considered, if possible, that quality in the 
Almighty. 

The " righteousness of God " is brought forward in ten pas- 
sages of the New Testament scriptures. We will quote all of 
them ; and we will begin with those as to which nobody hesi- 
tates in their simplest meaning. " If our unrighteousness 
commend the righteousness of God " (Rom. 3 : 5). " The 
wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God " (Jas. i : 
20). With no dispute upon two out of ten passages the rest 
gather more right to the simpler and more usual signification. 

But now another two : " To declare His righteousness " 
(Rom. 3 : 25) ; " To declare I say at this time His righteous- 
ness ; that He might be just, and yet the justifier of him who 
believes in Jesus " (E. V., 3 : 26). If any deserved to be 
unusual, these might seem to do so. And many of the 
Reformed seize them at once for what is a forensic significance. 
Dr. Hodge, strangest of all, does nothing of the kind. He 
adopts the sense " as of the general rectitude of God" 
(see Com. in loco). It " is recommended," so he tells us, by 
the consideration that such is " the common meaning of the word 
righteousness'' 

The eight, therefore, are now reduced to six. And I sub- 
mit whether the disqualification of these six for what Dr. 
Hodge confesses is the '■^common meaning^'' is not still further 
fearfully diminished by the whimsical differences of the signi- 
fications by which it is to be replaced. 

if the two former had the article in the Greek it would be easier to attach 
superstitious ideas to *' the gospel" as the only '^ power'' and to " the'^ 
righteousness as something special and artificial in redemption. We do not 
say " <3! " righteousness, for that in English would look more special still ; 
nor " righteousness " simply, for that would be awkward in our language ; 
but we give this notice that the English in its present shape has no warrant 
from an article to be anything but usual righteousness . 



52 ROMANS. 

Let us quote the six : — " Seek first the kingdom of God and 
His righteousness " (Matt. 6: t^Z)- '' ^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^^ righteousness 
of God is revealed'' (Rom. i : 17). "But now the righteous- 
ness of God without the law is manifested ; even the rights 
eousness of God which is by faith in Jesus Christ " (Rom. 3 : 
21, 22). Let it be considered that this is really close by the 
other passages which Dr. Hodge gives up as having the " com- 
mon meaning "). " Who, being ignorant of God's righteous- 
ness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, 
have not submitted to the righteousness of God " (Rom. 10 : 
3). " He made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin ; that 
we might be made the righteousness of God in Him " (2 Cor. 
5:21). '' Like precious faith with us in the righteousness of 
God, and our Saviour, Jesus Christ " (2 Pet. i : i). 

Any fair minded exegete must admit that refusing the plain- 
est interpretation could only be justified by the clearest agree- 
ment in an understanding the other way. That to say, The 
righteousness of God does not mean God's righteousness, 
when it is confessed that four times it does, is a gloss that we 
could only excuse if it were consistent with itself ; but, on the 
contrary, there is no agreement, and the debate is endless. 
One commentator will hold that God's righteousness is " God's 
method of justification " (Meyer, Bengel) ; another that it is 
the righteousness or justified condition that God bestows 
(Alford, De Wette) ; another that it is the righteous or right 
standing that is acceptable to him (Calvin, Neander). One 
actually goes so far as to say that the first " is most generally 
received," but that " the second seems to be again coming 
into vogue " (Hodge, Com. in loc). Can any thing be more 
admonitory ? We confess, men might be driven after this 
fashion if the usual sense were impossible. But, on the con- 
trary, such a sense is of the very best. We will not try this in 
each case of the six, but adhere to one (v. 17), believing that 
the most thorough exposition of one in its most simple signifi- 
cation, will cover all the rest, and prepare us to understand at 
once the two which we meet afterward in this epistle. 

" In it ; " that is, in " the gospel^ The gospel is '^ the power 



CHAPTER /. 53 

of God," not suo motu, for " the letter killeth," but because it 
is His great instrument. No one doubts that He could con- 
vert by the ten commandments. He did convert by a very 
imperfect knowledge of the gospel. He does convert idiots 
and infants, with no gospel at all. But it pleases Him to 
employ the gospel, and that because, as a moral lesson, it is so 
suitably the very ^^ power " of the Almighty. 

Now let it be understood : We are not speaking of redemp- 
tion. That is a thing of court. That is a thing vital to the 
salvation of a soul. Put that entirely away. We are speaking 
of its message. After mercy has been bought, the message of 
it God uses as his favorite ^^ power." And now why ? because 
" //z //" a certain ^'■righteousness is revealed.'' That tells the 
whole story. If " righteousness " be " revealed'' to a man, he is 
himself righteous, and that by its very light. How else could 
he be converted ? And the " righteousness revealed^" whose 
righteousness had it better be ? Not his own ; for that is 
imperfect. Not of a tree or a bird, for there is no such thing. 
Not Gabriel's ; for that is far away. But " the righteousness of 
God," and that eminently in the gospel ; that finest case of 
righteousness, the salvation of the sinner ; that which is to 
feed Heaven (Is. 35 : 8) ; that which entered into the heart of 
Lydia (Acts 16 : 14); that which befell the Thessalonians who 
were to " receive the love of the truth " (Thess. 2 : 10) ; that 
which makes us like to Him, when we ^' see Him as he is " 
(i John 3:2); and that which bedecks all saints when " God 
hath shined into their hearts, to give the light of the knowledge 
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus " (2 Cor. 4 : 6). 

So much for " God's righteousness" and Paul's calling the 
gospel the power of God because '' i7i it the righteousness of 
God is revealed." 

This fits all the other sentences. 

It is not a matter of ransom. That is forensic. It is not a 
matter of immediate regeneration. It is a tale only of the 
instrument. God, who frees us by the cross, and who lifts us 
by His power, makes the instrument of that power to be the 
message of the gospel. For, to lift us at all, we must have an 



54 ROMANS. 

idea of righteousness, and there is no righteousness that shines 
like God's, and there is no shining of God's righteousness half 
so bright, and, therefore, half so fitted to be instrumentally 
ordained, as that which shines in the cross of the Redeemer. 

Now this links all these notices together. First, " the gos- 
pel is the power of God." Why ? because it is the instrument 
of God's power in revealing righteousness. Second, " the 
power of God unto salvation," and why ? Because revealing 
righteousness is itself salvation, discerning righteousness 
being nothing else than being righteous, and death the 
darkness of the sinner. Third, "/^ every one that believeth^ 
Why ? Because the righteous lives by faith. He becomes 
righteous in the shape of faith. He must see righteousness 
by the eye of faith ; and if the reason that the gospel is the 
power of God is that in it God's righteousness is shown, then 
it must be to every one that believeth, because believing is a 
sight of righteousness ; that is, faith, when it becomes saving, 
must be moral faith ; the boyish faith of our infancy must 
be suffused with light, (as the Catholics say, " infused with 
love"), faith itself becoming righteousness (Trent, Canon 12), 
that is, the newborn sight of a better nature. And here comes 
in the expression "fromfaith to faith." It has been misera- 
bly thrown into waste. And yet it helps marvelously. Shedd 
reads it, " from one degree of faith to another." Hodge reads 
it, " entirely of faith." Meyer reads it, ^' for the increase of 
faith." McKnight reads it, " which springs from faith, and 
which faith receives." In so critical a passage we scorn any- 
thing general, and insist on an absolute meaning. "/;z//y" 
that is in the gospel, " the moral excellence of God is revealed^'' 
so that our poor souls see it and therein is conversion ; but 
they see it not without God's making " the gospel " His '-^ power " 
(v. 16), and bestowing on us ^^ faiths In other words our 
seeing it is ^^ faith ^ And now (more inwardly still), we see 
it "out of" (k) faith. Faith is that in the illuminations of 
which we get our ideas of righteousness. The God-given 
dawning of "faith" is that "out of" (£«) whose very 
bosom we get the light to see the righteons7iess of God. Hence 



CHAPTER I. 55 

Paul declares that " faith " is the " substance " and the 
''evidence" (Heb. ii :i) "of things hoped for" and "not 
seen." Grant that it is the dawning of our own righteous- 
ness, and of course it is the dawning of God's righteous- 
ness in any increased sense and warmer appreciation of it by 
the sinner. And this makes perfect the expression ^^ from 
faith to faith y Where else could the revelation come from, I 
mean mediately, except from faith ? And what else could it 
be made "/^"except to faith? The meaning is complete. 
Righteousness itself exhibits itself in our own young right- 
eousness, viz., in our faith, and it exhibits itself to nothing 
else possible than that, viz., to our faith. And this like a 
sum in arithmetic proves itself all the way back to the begin- 
ning ; for that the righteousness of God is just plainly what 
we have stated, viz., his superior excellence, has now confir- 
mation from the sentence that it " is revealed from faith to 
faith!' 

" As it is written." We need have little difficulty now with 
all that remains. " Live j " that we have already looked at as a 
name for ^'-salvation (v. i6). " The righteous shall live'' Who 
else do live ? and in what else does life consist ? " The right- 
eous fro7n faith shall live." How else are they righteous, 
except dawningly so, and in the shape of ^'- faith ? " Or how else 
do they live ? for it makes not the smallest difference whether 
this sentence from Habbakuk puts the ''faith " in the one part 
of it or the other. " The righteous from faith live J' not sim^ply 
'' fro?n " that wretched beginning, which is really nothing but 
less sinfulness, but ''from " this as the earnest of a better, just 
as we are said to h^ partakers of God's holiness (Heb. 12 : 10) ; 
not that we are really holy, but less sinful ; and that there is 
dawning in our mind a faith that may proceed to perfectness. 

And how great a " salvation " this is the apostle means now 
to picture by exhibiting the opposite : — 

18. For the wrath of G-od is revealed from heaven upon 
all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who keep back 
the truth in unrighteousness. 

The most important word in all this sentence is the word 



56 ROMANS. 

"truth." The most important idea in all this epistle is that 
a new sight, speaking on the side of man, or a new light, 
speaking on the side of God, is what constitutes righteousness, 
and that the access of it constitutes conversion. This new 
light is a moral light, or, as the sinner had some before, a 
renewed moral light, or, more simply still, a greater ; the 
new moral sight is nothing more than faith, though that 
word is chosen because it includes in it a recognition of 
Christ, which comes very naturally, because the sight itself 
arises under the hearing of the gospel (Gal. 3:2, 5). The 
favorite word that Solomon uses is ^'•wisdom.'" He act- 
ually opens the Proverbs with the key, Wisdom is righteous- 
ness (i : I, 2, see Com.). Let us fortify ourselves for a most 
thorough consideration by remembering that light is all that is 
necessary for righteousness, and for all the graces of the 
Spirit. We can see this no more clearly than in the announce- 
ment, "When He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we 
shall see Him as He is " (i Jo. 3 : 2). This, of course, is a full 
exposition of the last sentence, " In it," that is in the gospel, 
"the righteousness of God is revealed." This light being 
a moral light, and answering to a moral sight, and, of course, 
to a renewed or a regenerated conscience, is really a consti- 
tuting fact in all the Christian graces. Having this moral 
light upon God, or, what is the same thing, a moral sight 
of His righteousness (having His " righteousness revealed " v. 
17), is tantamount to loving him. Seeing the beauty of a 
picture and loving a beautiful picture are one and the same. 
Having a moral sight of Christ is the differentia between a 
common and a saving faith. Having a moral sight of our- 
selves is repentance in its very genuine self. And so a moral 
sight is the gracious ingredient of hope and diligence and all 
the virtues of the believer. 

The great crime of the Protestant church, with all its splen- 
did excellencies, was that it disturbed the Catholic definition. 
The Catholic definition of faith was that ^'- fides fonnata^'' 
or faith that was saving, was faith that was " infused with love." 
It was horrible to disturb that view. The Catholics dis- 



CHAPTER I. 57 

turbed it by imputing to faith perfectness and supererogatory 
merit. But the Protestants disturbed it by throwing it clean 
■off its base. We have destroyed the very nature of faith. 
We make faith a cHnging to Christ on the explanation 
of His plan. We make holiness a consequence of believ- 
ing. Whereas believing is holiness. We lose all sight 
of Paul's careful sentence, — " In it (viz., " the gospel ") the 
righteousness of God is revealed," and " revealed out of (from) 
faith," faith itself being the thing in which better views of 
holiness for the first appear ; '' revealed (therefore) out of 
faith unto faith," faith introspecting itself and getting in itself 
its first new enkindled ideas of righteousness; — and encourage 
a murderer, for example, to get a knowledge of a mere saving 
plan and squarely trust it ; beating down his better thoughts 
that penitence must come at the very beginning ; saying noth- 
ing about faith as itself a moral illumination ; and hence, as 
Jeremy Taylor writes, betraying the church into being saved 
by faith, when that faith is so bare in its idea that betterment 
is to come after ; exhibiting the baleful model of believing as 
a trusting in an explained Christ, with holiness as the effect ; 
having the trust, therefore, and sometimes not the holiness ; 
leaning heavily upon Christ with only clean cut views of His 
redemption, and never getting on to the result (since we are 
saved before it), viz., the actual eye for a thorough revolution 
in our living. 

Faith, therefore, being this actual eye, and standing for 
that vision in the sinner when the righteousness of God has 
l)een savingly revealed, is the very salvation itself, and, now, the 
" for " with which our present verse begins, ennobles the salva- 
tion by showing just as distinctly the difficulty of the sinner out 
of which the salvation by faith the more strikingly appears. 
"The wrath, of God." Not his resentment. Sinfulness in God 
would be the same as sinfulness in man (i Jo. 2: 8 ; 4: 16). 
Not his vindicatory justice in the sense of some of the Reformed 
(Hodge, C. 5, § 12). God has nothing moral primordially, 
save (i) benevolence and (2) a love of holiness. To put revenge 
in such a place is blasphemous and wicked. God hates sin, 



58 ROMANS. 

and unspeakably loves its opposite. This is the primordial 
affection. Vengeance is its consequence. Vengeance, therefore, 
is not an original lust, but a derivative obligation. Punish- 
ment is a constitutional device, and God necessarily follows it. 
But he hates it as a bitter need (Lam. 3: 33 ; 2 Pet. 3: 9).^ 
Moreover he does not hate the culprit (Matt. 5 : 45). He hatesj 
him as we are enjoined to^^hate him (Ps. 139: 21) ; but He loves^ 
him in every other sense (Jo. 3: 16). And ^^ the wratH 
of God'' is a convenient trope for saying all this as to His aw+ 
ful administrations. 1 

" The wrath of Godi^ revealed." Not like His righteousness 
at all (v. 17). That is revealed savingly. '' The wrath of God 
is revealed'' to the damned. It " is revealed" to all of us. It 
" is revealed" not ^' from faith " (v. 17), but "from heaven ; " 
and how it " is revealed " Paul tells us in certain other verses 
(vs. 19, 20). 

But now he is engaged upon the subjects of the wrath. 
These are not the ungodly and the unrighteous. If they 
were, there could be no gospel. Paul is about to utter the 
most distinctive evangel. " Righteousness " is a thing " re- 
vealed " (v. 17). It is revealed in the shape of ^'- faith." When 
I have a revelation of righteousness, I become righteous, by 
all the increase of the moral vision. This revelation of right- 
eousness is made to faith. And as faith itself is a vision, it is 
in faith, or, as Paul expresses it, out of faith, that I discern the 
right. The righteousness of God, therefore, is revealed to 
faith out of faith, and it is in the weak beginnings of faith that 
I begin my heavenly vision. 

Now why do not all men begin it ? 

It is in expounding this that Paul shows what is '•Hmgodliness" 
or what that " ungodliness " is on which '' the wrath of God " 
preeminently descends. 

All men have "/r?^^'/^." Paul is about to show where they 
get it (vs. 19, 20). Most men have saving " truth." " Truth" 
is a wide word. The " truth " in art means more than shape 
or color, for, most of all, it means beauty. And so in Christ 
men have all measures of the " truth." " Truth " most worth 



CHAPTER I. 59 

the name is precisely that " righteousness of God'' which is re- 
vealed from faith to faith. As a man can't paint divinely till 
he knows that ^' truth " which consists in beauty, so a man 
can't live divinely till he knows that ^^ truth'' which consists 
in righteousness. But then all men know this to some extent. 
Even the devils have a decaying character. 

Paul recognizes the fact that this knowledge of the " truth" 
urges and presses. The Quaker and his " inward light" un- 
doubtedly are of this nature. Paul pictures the idea of truth- 
enough-to-convert-us. Undoubtedly he favors the fact of 
light enough for every one, if he would follow it, to bring him 
out into the Kingdom (v. 20), and, therefore, his lost ones are 
but of a single class, viz., the ungodly and unrighteous among 
men, " who hold back the truth in unrighteousness." 

Let me be careful with all this. I do not mean an " inward 
light " that would save a man without the Spirit ; I mean one 
that would save a man if he would follow it. No man williol- 
low it. By the works of the law, that is, works engendered by 
any form of " truth " left simply to teach, no man is made right- 
eous. He would be made righteous if he would obey ; but 
there is the very mischief. Evil has the upper hand, and 
drives the sinner to " hold back " the truth ; and that is the only 
sort of impenitency and ruin. 

" Hold back." KarexeLv never means to ^' hold" (E. V.), that 
is, in the New Testament. It may in the classics ; but, scrip- 
turally, it always conveys an intensity of meaning. We are 
commanded to " /z^/^ /^j-/ that which is good" (i Thess. 5: 
21). We hear of holding hard to the land (Acts 27: 40), of 
holding ]\\m. hard not to go from them (Lu. 4: 42). If Karexetv 
meant simply to possess (E. V.), this would be its only instance. 
They that buy are to do so as not holding hard (i Cor, 7: 30). 
They are to hold fast the traditions ( i Cor. 11: 2). " As hav- 
ing nothing, and yet holding all things hard " (2 Cor. 6: 10). 
The Revisionists are right, therefore, in translating it here 
as holding down (Re.). '' The truth " is par excellence morale 
as where Christ appears "full of grace and truth " (Jo. 8: 44; 
2 Cor. 4: 2). The devils, even, have the working and the 



6o ROMANS. 

striving of the " truth'' Holding back that " truth " which is 
ever pushing for the supremacy, is just the feature of impen- 
itency, and is just the sin and the curse " uJ>on "which " the 
wrath of God is revealed." 

It will be noticed that the apostle says ^^upon\kni). The trans- 
lators render it " against " (E. V. & Re.), and they may appeal 
to Homer (II. 13: loi; 5: 590); though even in Homer we gain 
by speaking of making war " upon.'' In Paul every syllable is 
to be counted in. If Paul said '' against^" the view would be 
commonplace. But as he says " icpon., " we are led to connect 
the sentence with all the rest of the epistle. " Salvatio?i " 
(v. 16) consists in ^^ righteousness" (y. 17), and it consists in 
having it " revealed" (ib.), and it is " revealed" in the embry- 
onic condition of believing (ib.). Damnation consists in 
wickedness ; in pain, to be sure, additionally, but above and 
aback of that, in wickedness. Therefore the philosophic text 
that " wrath " is '' upon " the wickedness. It is " against " it 
as well ; but, more than that, " upon " it. It descends in that 
very shape ; and where the law strikes the man, may be emi- 
nently in the point of pain, and in the shape of torment, but, 
far above this, in the shape also of sin. Therefore the man is 
'■'• given up" to use the language of the apostle (vs. 26, 28), or, 
to express it as above, " The wrath of God is revealed from 
heaven upon" that is in a very curse upon the thing itself, 
deepening it and making it more bitter, for the very crime of 
holding back the truth, and that by the very means of {zv) the 
" unrighteousness." 

19,20. "Because." The apostle now adds two verses to 
show that they ''hold" the truth, and then twelve verses more 
to show that they ''hold" it " back": — 

19. Because that which is known of God is manifest in 
them, for God made to them the manifestation ; 20. For the 
unseen things of Him from the creation of the world are 
deeply seen, being perceived by the things that are made, 
even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are with- 
out excuse. 

" That which may be known " (E. V. & Re.) is classical, 



CHAPTER I. 6 1 

and might sufficiently answer, but it is ominous of what is best 
that it would not answer in any other of the fourteen instances 
of TO yvcjoTov in all the Testament. There is a vast deal 
unknown. If Spencer had confined himself to that, he would 
have done very well. Then there is sl vsLSt deal " known ; " 
and Paul ennobles that when he calls it the " the eternal pow- 
er and Godhead." He calls these, "unseen things," and so 
they are ; so signally so that a man like Spencer can deny 
them. In other words God is silent and invisible, so that an 
atheist, without visible absurdity, can deny any such being. 
And yet these " zmseen things are deeply seen.'* Paul, to 
bring out the paradox, uses the same opdw. They " ^r^ 
deeply seen, being perceived by the things that are made." 
Of course before " the creation " there was nothing to see. 
But, after the creation, that is " from " or after "the creation 
of the world," things were in such a plight, that when man 
came (the King was still invisible ; everything about Him per- 
sonally was still an " unseen thing,'' but) He was to be known 
of in His works. We were so constituted as that we must have 
found Him out, and, therefore, Paul says, He was manifested 
in ourselves. And, choosing attributes that are bravely com- 
prehensive, viz.. His " power" and also His " Godhead," and 
affixing a word that carries them back to everlasting, he says, 
what is very expressive, that " God made the manifestation ; " 
that is to say, that our Creator had such fidelity as that He 
took care that we should know His ^'eternal Godhead.'' And 
Paul could say this without risk ; for the Romans need but 
step to their own Pantheon, to see how the knowledge of a 
God was to be found all over the earth. 

But the idea is, that all men, thus possessing this knowledge 
of God, were choking it, and keeping it down (v. i8) all the 
time. And he develops this to three degrees : First, they 
fought it off, so that it should not increase and save them 
(v. 17) ; second, they fought it back, so that it should decrease 
and darken (v. 21) ; and third, they were ^^ given up," so that 
they should fall into utter folly (v. 22), and into utter shame 
and bestiality of living (v. 24 etc.). This is the way that the 



62 ROMANS. 

apostle illustrates his idea that the entrance of moral " truth " 
or light was faith and righteousness and salvation (vs. i6, 17), 
and that the keeping back of moral '' truth " was that which 
constituted the ^^ wrath of God'' directly ^^ upon^' and in the 
shape of, the world's " unrighteoiLsness .'' 

21. Because, when they knew God, they glorified Him 
not as God, nor gave thanks, but were made vain in their 
reasonings, and dark as to their senseless heart. 22. Assert- 
ing themselves wise, they were made fools, 23. and changed 
the glory of the incorruptible God in the likeness of an 
image of corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed 
beasts, and of creeping things. 

The ^^ because'' previously (v. 19) covered only their knowl- 
edge, and how they were " without excuse" because " they 
knew." The "because" now covers their use of knowledge, 
and how they abused it and kept it back. One idea follows 
endlessly, '' Salvation " is life (v. 16). Life is " righteousness " 
{y.i']).^^ Righteousness" is '^ faith" (vs. 16, 17), at least the 
small beginnings of it in the regenerate sinner. Regeneration 
is by the ^^ power of God" (v. 16). And the '-'■power of God'* 
makes such a favorite instrument of ^^ the gospel" that the 
apostle calls that ^Hhe power of God." And the thing in " the 
gospel" is " the light of the knowledge of the glory of God" 
(2 Cor. 4 : 6), or, as the apostle expresses it, '■'■the righteousness 
of God" (v. 17). When that is ^^ revealed" mz., God's moral 
excellence, the man becomes morally excellent. Every man 
understands that (even God) " as he thinketh in his heart so is 
he " (see Com. Prov. 23 : 7). Let a man see *' righteousness" 
and he is '^ righteous ; " and he is " righteous from faith." " The 
righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith." That is, 
^^ faith" when man has been busy seeking God, though the 
driving force may have been terror, and the ^^ faith " quite the 
common ^^ faith " of selfishness, yet, when it becomes responded 
to by the Almighty, has opened into its very bosom a revela- 
tion of ^^righteousness." That is, a man's conscience becomes 
quickened, and in the revelations of this moral eye God 
reveals Himself. Hence the meaning of the sentence, " The 
moral excellence of God is revealed from faith." Where can I 



CHAPTER I. 63 

resort for any cognizance of excellence, if I do not look for it 
in upon my faith. And as taste in a man is that which 
uncovers beauty, and the taste of a man must resort, in order 
to understand beauty, to his taste, so the apostle makes the 
genesis of conversion very complete. It is " the power of God,'' 
in the grand instrument of " the gospel," making the central 
figure of ^^ the gospel,'' viz., God, to be "revealed " in His excel- 
lence — that excellence ^'' revealed" (in the very act of prayer) in 
the very bosom of the praying vcidiXis ^^ faith" j so that the 
common faith breaks out with the light of conscience, and so 
that it is there that a man gets his view of righteousness, 
and so, in his very '^ faith," becomes '' righteoics," so that the 
revelation " to faith " is made '^ from faith," and the ^^ faith " 
so engendered is imputed to a man for righteousness (4: 22, 
24), and becomes actual righteousness in a sense that shall be 
complete when it becomes lost in sight (2 Cor. 5 : 7), and 
perfect (i Cor. 13 : 12) in the kingdom of the blessed.* 

So much for the one side of the apostolic statement. But 
they " that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but 
obey unrighteousness," have just the opposite history. The 
one man is saved in his very faith ; the other man is damned 
in his very sinfulness. His fault is that he " keeps back the 
truth." Therefore he is cursed in this very shape ; the truth 
is darkened to him. The apostle divides his reasoning. First, 
there is the possession of the truth. That is made sure in the 
verses that have gone before (vs. 19, 20). " They knew God." 
Let us hope the aorists may be noted. He was not a some- 

* The whole thing is stated in different language in vSecond Thessalonians 
(i : 8) : — " Taking vengeance on them who know not God." What is there 
in God to know except His " righteousness ?" Knowing His power or know- 
ing His wisdom would not save us. Knowing His spiritual wisdom, or 
knowing His moral excellence, is what we achieve in being converted. And 
to justify Paul's awful threats (vs. 8, 9) against so helpless a thing as not 
knowing, comes the explanatory sequel — "and obey not the gospel of our 
Lord Jesus Christ." The very " gospel," according to Paul, is that in 
which " the righteousjtess of God is revealed. " And the crime of not knowing 
Him (2 Thess. 1:8) is signalized by the wickedness of not yielding the 
least to the simple directions of the gospel. 



64 ROMANS. 

thing that '•'' 7nay be known'' (E. V. v. 19), but r6 yvwarov /. e. 
a something diOXMdXiy '■'■ manifest y The apostle goes further, 
and says, He was " manifest inside of them ; " and, further, that 
" God made the manifestation" Then, secondly, that this 
''''manifestation^'' which was not " the gospel," but, as Paul 
expresses it, ^'' from heaven" and which ^^ being perceived by the 
things that were made " was no less a truth than an " Eternal" 
with ^^ power ajtd Godhead" they stifled. And Paul illustrates 
this as of the most wilful shape. They saw plentifully His 
gloriousness, and did " not glorify Him" and they used plenti- 
fully His power, and did not thank Him ; and so the third truth 
came out, that what truth they had was dazed. They " were 
made vain in their reasonings, and dark as to their sense- 
less heart." This was a judicial sentence. ^'Made vain" 
Liddell has the plausible idea that iiaTaiou is linked with the 
Italian matto and the English mad j and certainly fxaraLoq 
in its six instances in the New Testament, would give its 
meaning better by being translated crazy than translated 
^^vainj" but in all the classics (idrriv especially, and some 
of the compounds, seem to demand the sense of futile or 
to no effect. "Dark." We adopt this reading simply for 
euphony. The literal reading is " their foolish (or senseless, 
Re.) heart was darkened" (E. V.). "Asserting themselves 
wise." The very roar of some great metropolis thun- 
ders this out upon the air. It is a singular mixture, 
however ; for the mass of the impenitent, boldly as they turn 
to cavil, will admit in quiet moments their own foolishness. 
" Changed." It is important to notice the particle "in." It 
is not " into (E. V. and Re.) the likeness of a man," but " in 
the likeness of a man." And this is a nice description. It is 
repeated in the twenty-fifth verse. If I charge a man with 
making an "image of God " dind changing "the incorruptible 
God "^V?/^ the image, or even into the '■^ likeness " oi "four- 
footed beasts," he will repel the charge with indignation. He 
will tell me justly that he does no such thing. And the second 
commandment was intended, not to forbid any such thing as 
this, but just that which the man will confess, viz., that he 



CHAPTER I. 65 

makes a certain something to represent God. The hideous ht- 
tle idols in the eye of a Hindoo are not God, but something- 
that stands for God ; and indeed, as he is a Pantheist, in his 
particular case they are, as taken at random, a part of Him. 
All idolaters profess in their more learned class a unitary 
Deity. But God forbids such representations ; and now Paul 
gives the reason for it. Men change the truth of God " in " 
the false thing (v. 25) ; or, as it is expressed here, they change 
''''the glory of the incorruptible God'' [not '^ into," ior scholars 
with singular unanimity agree that h never means " i7ito," 
but) '' i7z the likeness of the image " of such degrading objects, 
viz., "of corruptible man and of birds and of four-footed 
beasts and of creeping things." That is to say, the practical 
result as shown in history is, that God gets " changed'' in such 
representations ; and as " the image'' must have been chosen 
for some sort of '' likeness," they change God '' i?i " that " like- 
ness J " that is, they are '' 7nade vain in their reasonings " from 
the twist given by such a representation. 

24. Wherefore also God gave them up in the desires of 
their hearts unto the uncleanness of having their bodies 
dishonored between themselves. 

" Also." A very nice distinction seems made by the position 
of Kal It belongs to " wherefore." For the same great reasons 
God gave over their "bodies" (v. 24) as well as their minds 
(v. 23). It does not mean ^^ also God" (E. V.) ; nor are we 
willing to see it obliterated as by a various reading (Re.) ; for 
the MS. testimony is not sufficient. It is needed just where it is. 
It does not belong to " God," for it does not mean that " God 
also (E. V.) gave up their bodies," when they themselves 
(v. 23) had given up their minds. The giving up by God is 
of the whole, and from the very beginning. And here is just 
the time to announce four realities. First, a man saves him- 
self. The first motions of a change are by the man. As far 
back as conviction the first cloud of seriousness passes over a 
man's own spirit. A man is never saved till he " stirs up him- 
self to take hold on God " (Is. 64 : 7). It is vital to know 
this ; otherwise men may trifle according to the prophet by 



66 ROMANS. 

saying, " Let Him come near and hasten His work that we may 
see it" (Is. 5 : 19). Because, secondly, the first motion of a 
change is by the God. God saves a man ; and saves him from 
the very beginning. The very motions that are most our own 
are motions of the Almighty. There is no difference in the 
periods. God begins with a believer at the bottom of his 
unbelief. The influences are upon our will ; and therefore it 
seems as much our will at one stage of our sanctification as 
another. If the gospel is the power of God, it shows itself in 
mtr power ; and if it proclaims His righteousness, it shows itself 
in our righteousness. And if we give God thanks, it is from an 
outside revelation that reveals to us that it is God thatworketh 
in us, even when we are conscious that we are working out our 
own salvation with fear and trembling. This is the reality on 
the one page of the apostle. Now on th*e other it is exactly 
the same in regard to sin. It is always our sin. For, thirdly, 
it is not true that we first sin wilfully, and then God gives us up 
so that it is less our agency than it was before ; for, fourthly. He 
gives us up from the very beginning. All these puzzles are 
due to the fact of the nature of the will. " God gave thein up 
in the desires of their hearts." We are not to say, "I can 
begin the work of reading and prayer, but when the gracious 
moment comes God must act ; " or, " I can begin to trifle and 
reject, but when the judicial moment comes, it is God that 
gives me over." It is God that gives me over from the very 
first. He must rule me from the very beginning of my history. 
There is never a moment but I must act myself ; and never a 
moment in which I am not acted in by the God that made 
me. '' In the desires^ This is the key to the whole paradox. 
In either damning or saving God acts in and with our 
''desires." " The uncleanness of having." It might be read, 
^' u?ito uncleanness so as to have.'' But the infinitive rather has a 
right to be governed if there be a proximate noun. " To dis- 
honor'' (E. V.) will not answer ; for there is no instance of a 
middle in arijud^u), and the passive capitally expresses all that 
could be desired. 



CHAPTER J. 67 

25. As being men who changed the truth of God in the 
false, and worshiped and served the creature rather than 
the Creator, who is blessed forever more. Amen. 

Not " 2£/^^" (E. v.), for the omvef means more than that. 
In the sixteenth chapter it is three times repeated. '' Salute 
Mary" (not ^^who" E. V., but) "as one who " bestowed much 
labor on us (v. 6). It gives the reason for the special saluta- 
tion. " Salute the beloved Persis as one who labored much in 
the Lord " (v. 12). And again " salute Andronicus and Junia 
as being people who are of note among the apostles " (v. 7). 
By the use of this pronoun Paul terminates the passage by 
summing up the specific charge against the impenitent. 

" Who changed," The idea is again presented of changing 
not ''into'' (E. V.), or ^y^r" (Re.), but changing "in." 
They " changed the truth of God in the false." Indulging 
in idolatry, which used images of God not truly descriptive of 
Him, they colored God in the picture. " The truth of God^'' 
which really included his ''righteousness'' (v. 17), they got 
all besmirched. And changing the true " i7i the false ^" they lost 
God in the very pretence of worship. And, sliding from the 
one to the other, they "worshiped and served the creature 
rather than the Creator." Paul's holy horror at which breaks 
out in the doxology, "Who is blessed forever more." 

26. Wherefore, God gave them up unto dishonoring pas- 
sions ; for their females changed the natural use into that 
which was aside from nature. 27. In like manner, also, 
the males, leaving the natural use of the female, were 
inflamed in their lust for each other, males with males, 
accomplishing shame, and bearing away in themselves the 
due reward of their error. 

"Wherefore." This word confirms the view just given. 
" God gave them up," in no way to destroy their responsi- 
bility. It is in man's " desires " that the mischief works ; and 
as long as it is "desire " that " hath conceived " (Ja. i : 15), 
the progeny must be " sin." There is no difference in man's 
acts as to their voluntariness, from the first dawning of 
accountable being. " Vile affections " (E. V.). Literally, 
'■'passions of dishonor." In more perspicuous English, "dis- 



68 ROMANS. 

honoring passions." "Females." That is the Greek, and Paul 
may have shrunk from the nobler epithet of " women " 
(E. V. and Re.). ''^OJ:\h.QVC females r Not ''for even (E. V.) 
their females y Te never means that. It might mean "" for^ 
for example^ their females^'' or '' for^ on the one hand, their 
females^ " (and there is another re to keep up the balance in 
the following sentence). But re is not strong enough as a 
copulative to make much notice of it necessary. We mention 
it at all because " even " (E. V.) is an unhappy expression. 
"-Females " were not so sacred that an Eastern pen would be 
apt to say "even" in exposing horrible iniquity. "Into that." 
Please observe that when Paul really means exchange or change 
into^ uq is the word, and not kv as in those previous verses 
(vs. 23, 25). "Aside from." This is the meaning of ■Kapa. 

28. And as it was not their judgment to keep God 
under close acquaintance, G-od gave them up to a mind 
without judgment, to do things not fit. 

Our authorized version reads " as they did not like.'' We can 
say with great boldness 6oKL[id:,o never means to " like " 
(E. V.) ; and, putting the negative to it, it cannot be rendered 
"refuse'' (Re.). It has an undetermined derivation, but, by 
its usage simply, its meaning can be sufficiently identified. 
Of its twenty-three instances in the New Testament, King 
James gives eight renderings, and the Revisers four ; but the 
word judge, if we take it, not in the sense of a court, but in 
the sense of making an estimate, might admirably fill the 
place of every one of them. 

" Without judgment." The word aJd/ci//of occurs eight 
times in the whole Testament, and King James translates it 
with three words, and the Revisers with two ; but in neither 
version is the word Judge or without judgment applied either to 
verb or adjective. We hesitate therefore. And yet even one 
passage in the Testament makes very awkward this steady 
omission of the commoner meaning of the word. " Prove 
{6oKL[xdl^£Te) your own selves ; or know ye not your own selves, 
that Jesus Christ is in you ? unless indeed ye be reprobate 
{a66KL[ioi). But I hope that ye shall know that we are not 



CHAPTER I. 69 

reprobate {a66KLiioi). Now we pray to God that ye do no 
evil ; not that we may appear approved {doKiiiot), but that 
ye may do that which is honorable, though we be as 
reprobate {a&oKLiioL)'' (E. V. 2 Cor. 13 : 5-7). Show an 
atom there of consistent sense ! What has Paul's being- 
a " reprobate " to do with what he was saying ? But 
substitute the word judge and Judgj7tent, and every thing 
comes into place. " Try your own selves whether ye be in 
the faith ; judge your own selves. Know ye not your own 
selves how that Jesus Christ is in you — unless indeed ye be 
without judgment. But I trust that ye will know that we are 
not without judgment. And I pray God that ye do no evil ; 
not that we may appear as having judgment, but that you may 
do nobly, though we be as without judgment." And we might 
take other instances. '' Men corrupted in mind, without judg- 
ment (reprobate E. V.) concerning the faith " (2 Tim. 3 : 8). 
*'As to every good work void of judgment" (Titus i : 16). 
Not that we need insist that the words can not be more 
idiomatic ; but only that to Judge and to be without judgment are 
the sufficient meaning, and that those are the words which 
most often prevent an entangling or discordant interpreta- 
tion. 

" Close aequaintanee," {kinyvi^aLq). Notice the z'kL It creates 
a meaning stronger than r^^^^c. "As it was not their judg- 
ment;" that is, since they made no such estimate as that they 
should "keep God under close acquaintance." God did 
what has been repeatedly described ; that is, to those who 
sought this emyvuGi^^ and urged a prayer for it, his righteousness 
was revealed (v. 17) ; but in those who made no such prac- 
tical '■'- jitdgment^'' what ^'■judgment''' they had was darkened. 

29. Being filled with all unrighteousness, maliciousness ; 
full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, whisperers, 
30. Accusers ; hated of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, 
inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 3 1 . With- 
out understanding, covenant breakers, without natural 
affection, unmerciful; 32. Being such persons as that 
when they had close acquaintance with God's manner of 
making matters right, since they who practice such things 



70 ROMANS, 

are worthy of death, not only do the things, but have a 
complacency with those who practice them. 

"Full." Different Greek from "filled." Stuffed ox gorged 
would be the figure literally, the adjective being from the verb 
to eat. " As persons who." The apostle sums up at convenient 
intervals by this word oltlvzq (see v. 25). In each case it 
covers the cream of their iniquity. " Close acquaintance ; " 
again the word emyvuGig (see v. 28). "Making right." We 
will waive our comment upon this till the next chapter 
(vs. 13, 26). It is a very important word. It is not God who 
makes these things "worthy of death." They are so in 
themselves. Therefore " since " is the meaning of 6n, not 
" tAat" (E. V. & Re.). "God's mannner 0/ making things 
right'' is, to give men what they deserve, not to create the 
feature of ill-desert. " When they had a close acquaintance ^ 
How real this is, can be seen in bloody sacrifices. The lost 
have more thought of terror sometimes than the saved. 
Nevertheless, with this agony upon them, they not only com- 
mit atrocities, but, what is strangest of all {cvvEv6oKovaLv)^ 
have a sort of " complacency " in them, along " with those 
who practice them." 



CHAPTER II. 

1. Wherefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever 
thou art who judgest, for wherein thou judgest another, 
thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest practicest 
the same things ; 2. And we know that the judgment of 
God is according to truth upon them who practice such 
things. 

"Whosoever." A most inexplicable criticism has been 
always making the first chapter an address to the Gentiles, 
and the second to the Jews. It ruins every thing. In the first 
place there is not a tittle of text for it. From the very begin- 
ning Paul addresses Romans, and, as a class among the 
Romans, converted people or saints. Jews and Gentiles being 
both at Rome, and both among the converts, he addresses 



CHAPTER II. 71 

both of them ; and, in fact, makes no discrimination, except 
that he uses both to illustrate his doctrine. In the first chapter 
he is describing, not Gentiles, but men, in the result, under the 
righteous judgment of heaven, of keepifig " back the truth in 
unrighteousness'' (v. t8). This was not the result to one class 
only, except as they had sinned more or longer in keeping 
back the truth. But Pompeii shows in that very age that it 
was the result to Gentiles, and the prophets showed that it was 
the result to Jews (Ps. 14 & 53 ; Is. i: 4,9, 21-23). Paul 
sketches all impenitence, and paints, what he would not charge 
upon all, but what all are on the highway to, sooner or later. 
He shows the gospel as a means of opening afresh the moral 
eye, and sin as a means of closing it ; and of closing it more 
and more till it darkens into inexpressible transgression. 
That is his sole object. And in the second chapter he varies 
it by showing that wakefulness in condemning others, en- 
hanced rather than mitigated iniquity. His teaching here is 
signal. He does not say, "Thou who judgest another," if 
thou "practisest the same things, condemnest thyself." 
That of course. Just here in the epistle we must prepare 
ourselves for profounder depths. His doctrine is much 
stronger. His burden is that the gospel is the power of God 
for revealing moral excellence to men, that, in that moral light, 
they also may look and live. He holds this forth as that 
which must be the life of all men. If, therefore, a man refuses 
this, but still insists upon being a judge of others, Paul does 
not say that then, if he commits the same things he condemns 
himself, but, much more signally, that he will commit the same 
things ; that sin is the same pest everywhere ; that its deep 
reaches are the same ; that its helplessness and incessant 
growth are universal ; and that if a man imagines himself clean 
when he is unclean, he parts with still more of his excuse, 
and adds another to the score of his iniquity. We do not 
deny that Paul might have been thinking of Jews. Doubtless 
he was ; and in the seventeenth verse he actually uses them 
for illustration. We do not question but that he may picture 
his worst Sodomitic practices from the heathen. If he did not, 



72 ROMANS. 

he was forgetting that heathenism was farther on toward 
damnation than what, till lately, had been the only religion in 
the world, viz., Judaism. We only say that Paul, speaking to 
Jews as well as Gentiles (see v. 7 ; 2:9, 10), did not specialize 
his drift, but used the one as well as the other for illustrating 
the consequences of keeping back the truth in tmrighteousness. 

" According to truth." This of course merges all into one 
grand theatre of inspection. " According to thy fear so is thy 
wrath " (Ps. 90 : 11). Show me exactly God's "/^^r," that is, 
how much He is to be loved, and then show me exactly how 
far I have departed from this standard of " z'rz////," and I will 
measure to the last ounce the weight upon me of the wrath of 
the Almighty.* A neighboring text does indeed sdij ^' of the 
Jew first'' (v. 9), but that is only because the Jew is the more 
responsible. Show me the heart of a man, and I do not care 
for his hue, or his blood, or in what form he bends his knee, 
or in what tongue he utters wisdom. Those are terrible 
texts : '* According to thy fear " (Ps. 90 : 11), and " according 
to truths 

''Against'' (E. V. and Re.). Better say "upon" (^^/.) God 
pities the condemned, and will say, " Friend " (Matt. 22 : 12), 
and " Son " (Lu. 16 : 25) in the very act of inflicting ven- 
geance. 

3. But canst thou be calculating upon this, O man who 
judgest those who practise such things and doest the same, 
that thou mayest escape the judgment of God? 4. Or 
despisest thou the riches of His goodness and forbearance 
and long suflFering, not knowing that it is the goodness of 
God that is to lead thee to repentance ? 

* This point is finely illustrated in Prov. 15:11 (see author's Com. on 
Prov.) : " Hell and destruction arc before the Lord, because also the hearts 
of the children of men. " That is, hell will be measured in its severity by the 
heart in its corruption. The sinner who leaves the world with a certain meas- 
ure of sin, will begin his perdition with pain and sin of a corresponding grade. 
No feature of this is lightened because the word is " Sheol" The grave 
means Hell just as fittingly and just as often as death means ruin. They are 
corresponding physical emblems for eternal giving up to sin. (Prov. 5:5; 
7 : 27 ; 9 : 18 ; 15 : 24 ; see Com. Prov.). 



CHAPTER II. 



73 



"Canst." The subjunctive certainly (see also " may est" 
"below) should have some distinctness. In Matt. 23 : ■T^'hy the 
E. V. translates the similar part of the verb, " How can ye 
€scape the damnation of hell ? " This will become very impor- 
tant in the ninth chapter (v. 15). 

" Judgest." This (see also v. i) is Kpivu^, like a "judgment" 
in court, not doKind^u, to make an estimate of, as in the last 
chapter (v. 28). 

" Despisest." Man, looking upon Christ, and seeing the 
enormous sacrifice that God's "goodness " is making to save 
•even a remnant, and then "calculating" that in some indif- 
ferent way he may " escape," does most insolently despise the 
"forbearance" and " longsufifering " and the terrible expe- 
dient of God in the ransom of our spirits. Where God is " cal- 
culating'' so closely, what an infamy for men to be '■'' calcu- 
lating" to run the venture ! 

"Wot knowing." If we could mix the idea of not consider- 
ing also, we would cover the Greek. " That it is the good- 
ness of God." That is, of this grandly pains-taking awfully 
soul-coveting Redeemer. " That is to lead thee to repen- 
tance." This not simply ends the idea, but adds to it. Luther, 
splendid as was his service, did no little damage. If we open 
a Catholic book this sentence would be largely emphasized. 
If we open a Protestant book it is almost ignored. It is more 
striking below. The text, " eve7y man according to his deeds " 
(v. 6) Protestants hardly notice. So, deeper still, " by patient 
contifiuance in well doing " (v. 7), or the sentence that follows, 
" To every 7na7t that worketh good'' (v. 10) ; and then more 
particularly the summing up, " For ?tot the hearers of the law 
■are righteous before God, but the doers of the law shall be made 
righteous" (v. 13). These are not Protestant sentences ; and 
the Romanists, in their '■^perfect " righteousness, destroy them 
as Catholic sentences. Let us be very careful as they occur 
in place. They all blend in the apostolic gospel. We are 
already getting the key. Salvation is a giving of life to 
a man by revealing to him in the gospel by the power of God 
the moral excellence of God, so that the man himself, through 



74 ROMANS. 

that moral vision, becomes personally a better man (Rom. i : 
i6, 17), which is the apostle's own hermeneutic for his teaching 
that '' The goodness of God is that which is to lead thee to 
repentance'' 

5. But through thy hardness and impenitent heart 
treasurest for thyself wrath in a day of wrath, and of a 
revelation of a righteous judgment of God ? 

This is the rest of the question. "Through;" a meaning 
for Kara that is remarked upon earlier: ^''through flesh;'' 
" through a spirit of holiness " (Rom. i : 3, 4). 

" Hardness " is that by which a man " keeps back the truth '* 
(i : 18) and therefore salvation. But, failing of life, he 
accumulates death, that is, adds to it. "Treasurest" — coin 
by coin of penalty. "In a day of wrath." There is much 
significance in this word ^^ in." ^^ Against" (F. V.) is 
not the preposition. Moreover the want of the article 
has its significance. It is not the " day of wrath ; " else 
all the commentators might be right in saying that it was 
the '' judgment." " The great day of His wrath " is of the 
Apocalypse (Rev. 6 : 17), though even there it does not mean 
the last day. The apostle has been speaking of " wrath " 
being ^^ revealed" (i : 18), and of the bad man's knowing this 
very thing, " a righteous judgment of G-od " (i : 32) ; and 
of this " revelation" and of this knowing making him specially 
inexcusable {ib. v. 20), and becoming a great occasion of his 
being given up [ib. vs. 24, 28). And now, undoubtedly, the 
apostle is returning to this thought, and means to-day as the 
^^ day of revelation ; " i. e. fixes upon 7iow as of all others the 
time when the anger, being despised, is treasuring itself up in 
the transgressor. 

6. Who will render to every one according to his 
works. 

"Render." Not necessarily give back (see Lu. 4: 20), or 
recompense (12:17). If that idea enters, it must be from the 
context, and not from the preposition 0.^:6. If we were to 
translate /crtra " Mr^«^/^ " (as in i : 3, 4), we would not go far 



CHAPTER II. 75 

from the sense. If a man sins, God gives him his sinfulness as 
his most horrible perdition. If a man believes, God endows 
him with his faith, nursed and furthered into sight. In either 
case he rewards him '-'-through his works'' 

But as Kara oftenest means " according to," let us give a 
wider significance to our comment. There are two species of 
award : one to the lost, and that we have already explained. 
There is a recompensing to every man '' according to his works'' 
If there be any riddle, it must be on the salvation side in the 
judgment. And yet how will it be with the saved ? Certainly, 
in a grave sense, according to their works. If I die good, I 
will be admitted into heaven. If you die better, . you will be 
admitted higher. I need not break up the question, and 
expound how a man's '' works " indicate his character, or go 
further and show that the sum of his " works " form his 
character : all this is understood. It is mere altering of the 
rhetoric, too, that all character must be of record, and that 
every act that shapes it must pass into the account. All this 
is obvious. But then the real question. What do I mean by 
character ? brings up the solecism at once. When I speak 
even of Paul's character, I mean bad character. When I speak 
of any saintly works, I mean evil works. How reward me if 
every imagination and thought of mine is only evil, and that 
continually ? Let us draw close to the apostle. With the 
finally lost man, judgment will be simple. " Every trans- 
gression and disobedience shall receive a just recompense of 
reward " (Heb. 2 : 2). But with the saved man it will be 
peculiar and gracious. Some saved men have had more sins 
than some lost men. And how could heaven be according to 
our works, when our works have been shameful, and nothing 
but sin has marked our acceptance with the Father ? The key 
is a mode of speaking which is rife in our present epistle. A 
man is " righteous " when he is less sinful. The clue is found 
in the facts. A man is pardoned when he is touched with 
grace ; and grace is of this very nature : it is amendatory, but 
not perfect. The sinner is always worse ; the christian is 
always better. The better man is the righteous man in Bible 



76 ROMANS. 

language. " Wherefore, holy brethren " (Heb. 3 : i), is an 
address, not to the holy, but to the sinful. It is in the measure 
in which they are less sinful that they are called holy. And as 
each act that is less sinful, makes the sinful saint by promise 
better, that tells the whole story. God keeps his books prac- 
tically upon our hearts ; and our acts, though sinful each one, 
if they be less sinful, are kept as our account ; and we shall be 
rewarded thus intelligibly " according to (our) works'' 

Rewardableness, which the scriptures undoubtedly speak of 
(Mar. 9 141 ; I Cor. 3:8; Heb. 11:6; Rev. 11 : 18 ; 22 : 12), the 
Romanists have treated under the name of " merit,'' laboring 
to efface the mischief by two sorts of merit, one like the guilt 
of the wicked strictly according to law, or, as of Adam, should 
he have continued innocent, and the other, not of condignity, 
as they call this, but of congruity, that is grace of the Almighty 
leading to a certain measure of " works," and regulating 
thereby, as what He calls a " reward " (Matt. 5:12), the dis- 
tinctions of glory in that world that we are to meet hereafter. 

The misery of the Catholic is that he confounds the two, and 
makes the merit of the saint too dangerously perfect. 

7. To those who through patience in well doing seek for 
glory and honor and incorruption, eternal life. 

"Through;" not ^^ according to" or ^^by" (E. V. and Re., 
see I : 3,4). "Patience;" the only virtue that actually 
pledges pardon. Christ says that it gets possession for us of 
our souls ; for that is His language, " In your patience get 
possession of your souls" (Lu. 21 : 19). "Ye have need of 
patience, that, having done the will of G<xi, ye may receive the 
promise" (Heb. 10 \2i^). Unless we are confirmed (crripL^u) 
by perseverance (Acts 16 : 5 ; i Thess. 3 : 13), there is no 
promise, after conversion, that we may not fall (Heb. 6 : 4 etc.; 
10 : 26-38). The verb that answers to vTrofxovT] (patience), 
is employed in the only promise : — " He that endureth 
{vno/^evu) to the end, the same shall be saved " (Matt. 10 : 
22). "Incorruption;" not "immortality" (E. V.). Adam 
and Lucifer had neither of them " incorruption," even when 
they were perfectly holy : nor have we, for we may possibly 



CHAPTER II. 77 

fall ; but, " through patience in well-doing^'' we may '-^ seek for " 
it, and there is reason to believe we may attain it, even in the 
present life. 

8. But to them who are selfishly in opposition, and do not 
obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, anger and wrath, 
9. Distress and anguish, upon every soul of man that works 
evil, both of the Jew first, and also of the Greek. 

"Selfishly in opposition." Not from eptq strife, but from 
kpiOevo), to hire out^ to act the hireling. It came then to mean 
to be mercenary, and, finally, to be of a party : the implication 
being that it was for gain, or at least for selfish opinion's sake. 
'Epic is twice used in the same text with kpcdeia (2 Cor. 
12 : 20 ; Gal. 5 : 20). " Do not obey the truth ; " rather keep 
it back as we have seen (Rom. i : 18). But obey unrighteous- 
ness ; how singularly real ! Men impatient of Christ, will 
absolutely slave for Satan. " Truth,'' endlessly cavilled at, 
might look with envy at the weight which the sceptic will give 
to errors. " Jew first ; " most righteously, for being most 
responsible for wickedness. 

10. But glory and honor and peace to every one who 
works good, both to the Jew first, and also to the Greek ; 
11. For there is no respect of persons with God. 

11. "For." This is rather an odd sequel for the expression 
"to the Jew first." " No respect, etc.," because, '' to the 
Jew first!" The remedy is to hold the ^^ for " as belonging 
to the whole sentence. '^ JVo respect etc.," because, indis- 
criminately of race, there is " glory and honor and peace to 
every one who works good." But then, on this very rule, 
" to the Jew first" because, while " indignation and wrath (shall 
be) to the Jew fi?'st," hQCdiMse '^ he that knew shall be beaten 
with many stripes " (Lu. 12 : 47), so ''glory " shall be ''to the 
Jew first," because what is hereditary in faithfulness breeds 
the strongest christians. Bible readers will be "first " in hell, 
but, in reward of faithfulness, "first " in heaven. Bushmen 
lost will be beaten with few stripes ; but Bushmen saved, 
tantis pro tantis, shall have little "glory." In the world to 
come (as a general rule at least) the highest and the lowest 



78 ROMANS. 

will be those who stood the highest in hereditary knowl- 
edge. 

12. For as many as sinned without law, shall also perish 
without law ; and as many as sinned under law, shall be 
judged by law. 

"For." The apostle now gives his most philosophic argu- 
ing. " God is no respecter of persons " because he will judge 
every man accordmg to the light he has. " Sin is not imputed 
where there is no law" (5 : 13) ; but this is only an imaginary 
case. Idiots and infants might come up to it. But the low- 
est Bushman has "/^wy " otherwise there could be no pun- 
ishment. When Paul writes "without law," he is writing 
Orientally. The Bible is full of such exaggeration. When 
Christ says, "Ye had not had sin" (Jo. 15 : 22), He means, 
Ye had not had near so much sin. When Paul says, " Sent 
me not to baptize "(i Cor. i : 17), he meant, chiefly, or not near 
so much. And so in the present text. All the laws of the 
Jews were helpful and precious, and hence, of course, increased 
their responsibility. Therefore we are simply taught, the more 
law the more punishment. The crazy notion that because " thou 
hast taught in our streets," therefore, of all reasons in the 
world, " Lord, Lord, open unto us " (Matt. 25 : 11), meets here a 
signal refutation. The " /aiej " we did not have we will not 
" perish " for, and when that " /aw " contains the gospel, as the 
whole 'Haw'' from Sinai undoubtedly did, we will not ''- peiHsh'* 
in that sin which Christ talks of as though it swallowed all 
other sin (Jo. 15 : 22), if we were without the gospel ; but 
only in that " laiv " we had, viz., that yvoarbv Oeov which is 
the appanage of every sinner (i : 19). 

13. For not the hearers of law shall be righteous before 
God, but the doers of law shall be made righteous. 

"For." The apostle very naturally goes on to reason, 
If any other rule prevailed, a man might get to heaven by 
hearing law instead of doing it. He illustrates by the case of 
the Jew. He is about to press that case (v. 17). For though 
the epistle is catholic, and addressed to cosmopolitan saints, 
he seizes upon Jews as a very extreme illustration. " If thou 



CHAPTER II. 79 

art called a Jew'' (v. 17). As though he would say, Take 
the worst case. Undoubtedly he was glad to reach that 
nation, for the Rabbins snared them fatally. No Jew, they 
taught, if circumcised, would ever perish. Of course he would 
benefit that nation. But dialectically they were his mere case 
in point. He would show the folly of false confidences, and 
the Jew, as betrayed into them most, he could hardly leave 
out in such reasoning. "Righteous;" in the way we are 
about to show. " Righteous before God." This is wonder- 
fully frequent throughout the Bible. Hezekiah was righteous 
before God (2 Ki. 20 : 3). So was Zacharias (Lu. i : 6), So 
was Elizabeth. Righteous before men a man may be, and be 
very unrighteous. The Jews were in that condition. ^'Before'' 
anybody means in his sight, or in his opinion. " The earth 
was corrupt before God." It is a Hebraism, and Paul devotes 
his logic to show how mortal man can be made really just, or, 
to use his own idiom, how the sinner can be "made right- 
eous /^^/^r^ Gody "Made righteous." This is a key to the 
whole epistle. It is Paul's critical expression ; and yet, 
perhaps, it would not be, if men had not warped it since the 
days of Luther. Ai/caww, let us distinctly think, was a plain 
word to the eye of a Greek ; and not a foreign word. It was 
bred in the language itself. Moreover it was not changed by 
the Hebrew ; for the Hebrew equivalent, as more simple, was 
quite direct. The Hebrew was the Hiphil of the verb to be 
righteous, and of course meant to make righteous ; and the 
Greek was a verb in ow, from an adjective in oq. What that 
means all linguists will know, 'A|^^ow means to make h^toq. 
iHeKpoo) means to make veKpoq. So dtKatou in the present 
instance, means to make diKatog (or " 7'ighteoiis "). Now 
there is one difficulty, and that can be easily explained. Who 
is ever \.o ^^ 7?iake'' anybody ^^ 7'ighteousV The word hence 
is rarely used in the classics, and dymCw (to sanctify) is never 
used at all. Therefore, in scripture, neither could be used, 
except in a very accommodated sense. 

Nevertheless, as both are used, and dLKaidco also in the 
classics, it offers itself to the same literary dissection as any 



So ROMANS. 

other predicate. And, at the very outset, among many other 
meanings, it offers two that are just the opposite. How are 
we ever to decide ? A^/ca^dw to hold righteous (Hdt. i : 89, 133), 
and 6iKai6i^ to co7idemn (Thuc. 3 : 40) are notorious in classic 
learning. The same word in the Greek eye is to mean one 
thing here, and flat the opposite over yonder. What are we 
to do ? Why things hke this are really keys to unlock, not 
facts to embarrass, linguistic difficulties. They tell a story, 
just as men do who are comrades on the opposite sides of an 
impassable arm of the sea. We make an inference at once — 
One or the other forded where the stream was near its spring. 
So now of (j^/ca^dw. It is foolish in Robinson, and worse, 
classically, in Donnegan, to come down the stream and choose 
a meaning as of the fountain head, which makes it necessary 
to suppose that just the opposite is across the gulf, and the 
ford practically impossible. Such has been a dreadful habit 
of interpreters. Instead of saying J^midw originally meant to 
count righteous (see Robinson), is it not better to go high up 
the stream, and ask, What does dlKr) mean ? insisting upon a 
traceable signification ? Then dkaiog, which is next below, 
would be the Adjective, evidently, from the noun dkr^. Then 
dtKatou would be the verb, creative of the condition implied 
in the adjective. Just as a^ido) means to make a^iog, so 6iKai6o> 
would naturally mean to make dkaiog, whatever the adjective 
from 6k?j would naturally imply. Amaiufia would then come in 
as the resulting effect, and 6cKaio)a/.g as the substantive act, 
and SiKaioavvrj not as the same as dkr/, but as the condition of 
the man or the thing that possessed the dUTj. This now is as 
smooth a laying down as of any possible tracings of sense,, 
marred only by the fact of the horrible scarcity of subjects ; 
for in heathen history where was the enrighteouser ? and, 
either in church or temple, where was the instance of the 
enrighteousment in any actual sense of one being, in this 
world, by another ? 

Still, to see how to count righteous, when it came to that, 
could change in the end into conde?nn, let us trace the thing 
fairly down by beginning at the head. What does SUtj mean ? 



CHAPTER II. 8i 

Originally, every body agrees, it meant custom. MKatog would 
then mean customary ; and, sure enough, we read in Homer of 
persons {piKaiovq) "observant of custom" (Od. 3: 52). But 
as what is customary among a settled people must, for mere 
State preservation, be principally right, dinT] as the right 
soon got a final footing. And let us disabuse it of all mix- 
tures. It meant right in esse. There is no doubt about that. 
It was used to mean the intrinsically noble, morally excellent, 
or se??iet ipso virtuous or divinely right thing. MKaiog, now, meant 
simply the adjective for that, and, hurrying on to our con- 
clusion, dLKaiou meant simply to make a man or a thing after 
the character of that adjective. The world would get back to 
that sense after exiles under a thousand Luthers. 

But now, the necessary variations, a/k;? undoubtedly meant 
the right. AlKawg meant right in the adjective sense, and could 
be applied either to persons or things. Among persons God 
can receive the title without perplexing us, for he is " right- 
eous" just as the sky is blue, or the ocean beautiful. Gabriel 
and Christ are unequivocally right. But man is not. And we 
are to consider the variance by which we call him so. And 
the grandest simplifier is to look at other words. How is a 
man " clean " (Jo. 15:3)? Why do we call him " holy " (Mar. 
6 : 20) ? This is a helpful part of our study ; for we have 
nothing to do but to press that question. Why should we go 
off into sophisms and say, to 77iake righteous means to cozmt 
righteous, unless we say, to make holy means to count holy ? 
y^Q d.r^'-'- quickened y Precious little! Set free. Alas, alas ! 
There are plenty of words in which a whole story is spared 
the reader. Unless we are willing to say counted clean wherever 
that word is to appear, we have no right to say counted righteous; 
for the motives of the two things are precisely similar, and 
either would do harm, as tending to obscure incipient sanctifi- 
cation. A righteous man, therefore, is called a righteous man in 
scripture when he is less sinful by the grace of his Redeemer, 
and when that young righteousness, which is really not 
righteousness at all (just as it is not holiness), is the earnest 
of more and better daily and in the life to come. 



82 ROMANS. 

So much for dkaiog. Now for 6iKai6u. It means to make 
right. First, as to things. A man stabs a man. A chief 
autocrat, looking on, says, I'll make that right. How can he ? 
Why, of course, by punishing. This is the way the comrade 
crossed the water. He crossed it high up. To justify a man, 
and to condemn a man, would come strangely out of the same 
word, if the word primarily meant count righteous (Robinson) ; 
but let it mean to make right (Liddell), and the divergence 
easily occurs. If I see a man robbing a cripple, and say, I'll 
make him all right, or see a man nobly defending him, and 
say, I'll make himdiW right, my meanings are directly opposite ; 
and yet they are not opposite at all. I mean in either case I'll 
see the thing righted ; and in Scotland justifying a man means 
to hang him (see Liddell). 

There is no reason, therefore, why biKaioui should not be 
translated to make righteous. If it is said, Men are not righteous^ 
I answer. Neither are men holy. Unless you are willing, there- 
fore, to abandon sanctifying or making holy, and cleansing and 
setting free, articulately you are just as reasonable when you 
say " 77iade righteous.'' If you say. Justifying is used putatively, 
I say. So is sanctifying. '' The unbelieving wife is sanctified 
by the husband " (i Cor. 7: 14). If you say. Undoubtedly 
the one is used of pronouncing or declaring righteous ; I say, 
So is cleansing. The priest, upon certain marks, was to cleanse 
the leper, and upon certain other marks, was to foul him 
(Lev. 13 : 3-13), which King James' men very properly 
translated to "pronounce clean" (Lev. 13: 13), or to pro- 
nounce unclean {ib. 5:3), according to the state of the leper. 
But if, keen for the Lutheran justification (which, let me 
remark here had no syllable to teach it for fifteen cen- 
turies*), you say, God is said to be justified (Lu. 7 : 29) — 



* This is a very remarkable fact. Luther has been celebrated above 
other achievements of his history for his doctrine of Justification by Faith. 
Luther invented it. There is not a line of it in the world before him. 
Augustine, whom the modern woild makes foremost in the faith, gives the 
natural sense to justification. " Who has wrought righteousness in a man, 
but Tie who justifies the ungodly ; that is, by His grace makes a righteous 



CHAPTER II. 83 

and men are said to be justified who are notoriously wicked 
(Is. 5 : 23), I say, Such usages are in every language. I 
murder my victim if I do it in buskins on a stage. I crush my 
opponent, when he is laughing at me, and taking notes to 
crush me immediately afterward. Men justify God (E. V. 
Lu. 7 : 29) just as we sanctify Him, or pray, " Sanctified be 
Thy name." And men make the wicked righteous (Is. 5 : 23) 
when they pretend to, or, to slide off into more unusual 
language, just as they "take away the righteousness of the 
righteous from him " (Is. 5 : 23). 

Men are sadly in error when they speak of their own doc- 
trine as purely forensic. It is not only not forensic, but no 
counterpart of any word spoken among men. It is a favorite 
assertion that 6LKai6o in this constrained sense, has the enor- 
mous predominance of approved usage. It is time to take 
note of the fact that it has no usage at all, unless we make an 
exception to this in the usage of these very men themselves. 

A forensic justifying is a pronunciation by a judge that a 
man. because he is not guilty, is actually righteous. A jury, 
from this nice distinction in men's minds, do not " make " a ver- 
dict, but " find " it. When I justify God, I find Him righteous 
actually. When I justify the wicked, I assert the same thing. 
When wisdom is justified, she is found righteous ; and when 
the publican is more justified, he is subjectively a better man 
than the hollow-brained Pharisee who is arraigned against him. 
These are all subjective findings, or makings out, while, 
heaven-wide from this, the Lutheran idea is factitious and 
nothing of the kind. " The hearers of law," therefore, "are 
not righteous before God ; but the doers of law shall be made 
righteous." That is, sweeping all the contents of law into 

man of an impious man ? " (Ps. 118, vol. 8). " Justification here is imper- 
fect in us " (vol. 5, p. 867). " When our hope shall be completed, then also 
our justification shall be completed" (vol. 5, p. 790). Chrysostom, Anselm, 
Jerome, Aquinas, Justin, and all the Apostolic Fathers, made justification 
mean sanctification, with none other than a picturesque or mere illustrative 
distinction. They knew no other. Why are we not informed of this in the 
History chairs of our seminaries ? 



84 ROMANS. 

one, (and that will include the " obedience of faith," 1:5 ; 16 : 
26, as well as every other obedience), the Aean'ng of such a law, 
instead of making a man more righteous, may make him more 
wicked ; but the dm'ng of it is itself righteousness. If it were 
perfect it would be righteousness like God's. It may be very 
imperfect, and yet " exceed the righteousness of the scribes 
and Pharisees ; " and if it is a righteousness risen at all above 
the condition of growing worse, it is a saving righteousness, 
just as fitly as there can be a saving repentance (Acts 3 : 19) ; 
and it is a conversion and a rising from the dead (Jo. 5 : 25), 
and a new life (6 : 4), and as of a clean heart, (Ps. 73 : i), and 
of that regenerating and sanctifying power which begets a moral 
change, and shows itself in ever increasing righteousness. 

14. For when it may happen that Gentiles who have not 
law, do by nature the things of the law, such men, having 
not law, are a law unto themselves, 15. Being persons who 
exhibit within the work of the law written in their hearts, 
their consciousness agreeing in the testimony, and their 
reasonings making accusation or excuse the one to the 
other 

"For." He gives now the reason why it is '■^ the doers of law 
(fix'^'C) shall be made righteous'' (3: 13). The parenthesis into 
which these texts are thrown (E. V.), is for purposes of special 
pleading. The words are to be understood as they stand. 
Nothing could be more simple naturally. "When." This is 
a very contingent when. "Orav means when rarely, or when 
possibly, or " when it may happen that." " Gentiles." "Orav indi- 
cates that he is not speaking of all Gentiles, or of many Gen- 
tiles. The article is left off. " Who have not law :" in the 
sense before explained (v. 12) of those who had little 
^'lawj" like as those of whom Christ speaks as having "no 
sin " (Jo. 15: 22). "Do by nature." That does not mean, 
as in our theological language, " do in their state by nature." 
The word occurs but fourteen times in all the Testament ; 
sometimes of beasts ; rarely of character ; once of God ; and 
never so as to be of service critically. In fact our technical 
adjective [iiaturat], so far as the New Testament is concerned^ 
comes from t^x^ (^ ^ox. 2 : 14, 44-46) oftener than from <^vai,q. 



CHAPTER II. 85 

Men are said to be Jews by nature (Gal. 2 : 15) ; surely not 
" in their natural state." And so ^^ when Gentiles who have ?iot 
law, do by nature the things of the law," they do them in the 
circumstances of their birth (^yw) and not in the more artificial- 
circumstances of having heard " the law.'' 

" The things of the law " ; that is, the gospel, along with alii 
the other " thmgs.'' The most dreadful law is the gospel, the: 
most cruel infinitely to them that disobey (Matt. 21 : 44 ; Jo. 
16 : 9). Sinai thundered that with its most terrible denuncia- 
tions. We must either imagine that it was mocking Israel, or 
else, when it said, Do this and thou shalt live, we must 
remember how much of Sinai revealed a Redeemer. It reeked, 
with sacrifices and bloody rites. And it gendered to bondage,. 
not because those that followed its teaching were not saved ;: 
thousands were saved ; but because the " old covenant," which, 
it exhibited, had to become a " new covenant," and to be 
" written in ; " that is, the revelation made on Sinai had to be 
in-wrought. What Moses said with a veil upon his face,. 
Christ had to say, having stripped off the veil ; He being " the 
prophet like Moses," but turning the outward into the inward, 
taking the old covenant and turning it into a '' new covenant," 
simply by having it submitted to, that is, by writing it on the 
heart (Jer. 31 : 33). Now what do we want of Christ pre- 
cisely ? That will explain our text, (i) First, all His sacrifice 
is necessary ; and that more (and more positively) than we 
can speak of or imagine. Without the shedding of blood there 
can be no remission (Heb. 9 : 22). But then the whole world 
has that. Why then might not all heathen be saved ? 
Because, (2) second. He must convert. It lies with Christ not 
simply to redeem but to convert the sinner. Why then may 
He not convert the heathen ? Because, (3) thirdly. He requires- 
the truth, and this of course ranges with the passage where 
" the power of God unto salvation " is declared to be the 
uttered " gospel." 

So much is settled. 

But now a question remains which is quite unsettled, — How 
much truth ? (i) Ransom is indispensable. (2) Conversion is 



86 ROMANS. 

of vital force. But these are provided by the Redeemer. The 
question is (4) How much truth must be provided ? And 
there is much in the word of God to lower rather than to 
heighten this demand for the saving of the sinner. 

Hardly has Paul asked " How shall they hear without a 
preacher ? " before he thunders forth, " But I say, Have they 
not heard ? " (10 : 18), and then plunges into that great 
answer, — " Their sound has gone out into all the world " (Ps. 

19 : 4). This was an old teaching (Col. i : 6, 23). To these very 
Romans he has supported our text by a previous position : — 
" For that which was known of God is manifest in them ; 
for God made the manifestation" (i : 19); and then he says, 
" They kept back the truth " (i : 18). Now we have only to 
ask. Does that truth, thus wilfully kept back, never assert 
itself ? We must be carefully understood, (i) Redemption 
is necessary ; but that is a work done. (2) Regeneration is 
just as vital ; and that too must be by the power of the 
Redeemer, (Jo. 5 : 21). (3) And he must regenerate by the 
truth (i Pet. I : 23), at least we know of no other method. (4) 
But query, how much truth ? Is not that really the only 
point in the difficulty ? The heathen has vast truth, and it has 
been shed upon him by revelation. He knows of God. He 
knows of grace. He knows of sacrifice. He has a distant 
shadow of pardon and redemption. He has images of prayer. 
How much more had Abraham ? (Gen. 15 : 8). Yea, Peter? 
(Matt. 26 : 56). When John verily thought that he might be 
an attache to the throne, how much more had Salome ? (Matt. 

20 : 21). No hint can be gathered that Cornelius had 
knowledge of Christ, and he is a snare unless he can be con- 
verted without it. We do not doubt that '■'■ the gospel is the 
power of God'* (Rom. i : 16), for that we have just been inter- 
preting ; but query, how much gospel ? Undoubtedly a man 
is saved who is better morally, for that is the repentance with 
which the Bible rings. The question is only, then, Were these 
men better ? and with all that remains of the text we would 
say. Decidedly they were. 

"May." Notice the subjunctive. The thing imagined to 



CHAPTER II. 87 

" come to pass " might come so rarely. Paul is urging the 
gospel, and would not be likely to exaggerate our chance 
without it. But it was of his mind to show that hearing was 
not doing ; and it made that more intense to intimate that 
doing might sometimes be without hearing, that is without so 
much hearing as the Jews might boast of in " the oracles of God " 
(3 : 2). " Such men." There is a change to the masculine. 
"As persons." We have remarked on oinveg before (i : 32). 
" Exhibit within." The h should have its emphasis. " The 
Law;" with the article. "The work of the law." Put all 
these peculiarities together. Not " /aw " in its vaguer gener- 
ality, but " lAe /aw," just as though they had heard the noblest 
teaching of the Law-giver. Not law, in theory espoused, but 
practically, " t/ie work of the /aw.'' And not that " wor/^ " pre- 
scribed by " the /aw," doctrinally submitted to, but exJiibited 
within J and definitely, to crown the representation, "written 
in their hearts," a clause impossible to satisfy, without the 
idea of inward conversion (see Prov. 3 : 3 ; 2 Cor. 3 : 2, 3 ; 
Heb. 8 : 10 ; 10 : 16). "Consciousness." Not ''conscience" 
(E. v.). When Paul says, " I have lived in all good conscience 
before God until this day " (E. V. Acts 23 : i), he was infinitely 
far from claiming a good moral sense. l.mkdvaLq had not 
become so definite. When Paul said he had " a good 
consciousness," he meant that he was sincere. When he 
directed people " to keep a consciousness void of offence," 
he was bidding them be honest. And Peter, when he says 
that " baptism " (which is his name for conversion, just as 
'^circumcision " is, a few sentences below, vs. 28, 29) is " not 
the putting away of the filth of the flesh," means that it is, like 
" righteousness " here with Paul, a very imperfect cleansing. 
" Putting away the filth of the flesh " means perfectness, not at 
all bodily washing. And Peter says. Baptism (conversion) does 
not pretend to that, but is " the inquiry of a good conscious- 
ness after God" (i Pet. 3 : 21). 

" Consciousness," therefore, in the present text, means their 
honest actual conviction. These convictions hold court, so 
the text proceeds to fancy, and make " accusation or 
excuse the one to the other." 



'88 ROMANS. 

But when ? Before we add a syllable, any usual reader 
would say, Undoubtedly in this world. But let us proceed. 

16. In a day when God judges the hidden things of the 
men through my gospel by Jesus Christ. 
" In a day." That means any day in which the ** gospel," 

which in a few sporadic cases men have been saved without, 
happens to reach " the men." Take Peter. He was a saved 
man before the scene on the Sea of Tiberias (Matt 4 : 20). 
Yet what did he know of the ^^ gospel V Why, afterwards, 
months and years, he imagined it an earthly kingdom ! We 
ought not to mock the facts by supposing that he was an intel- 
ligent believer. Yet he was a Christian. So was John. So 
was Mary. So, afterward, was Cornelius. Now, suppose " a 
day " when some Philip mounts into the chariot and explains 
the way of God more perfectly. What is the result ? Why, 
all which this beautiful text expresses. First, it is " a day ; " not 
'■^ the day'' (E. V). King James took this translation from a 
text that had not the article. And, though some MSS. supply 
one, the authorities are very balanced (see Alford) ; and the 
reason for copying one in might easily be imagined in the uni- 
versal haste to write upon the thought of the apostle as though 
he were speaking of the Day of Judgment. But examine him 
further. Not only is the textus receptus ^^ a day,'' hnt it joins 
a sentence which must be plainly understood of this world. 
The E. V. prefixes a long parenthesis (vs. 13-15), but it is 
plainly to defeat the inference of which we speak. And not 
only so, but the other terms, " the hidden things," for 
example, and the word ^^ Judge" exactly suit the facts with a 
man like Cornelius. Let us bring his case into the question. 
^' There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a cen- 
turion of the band called the Italian band." There is not the 
slightest evidence that this heathen captain, landing from 
Rome, had ever dreamed of the Nazarene. In an inspired 
book, would not the opposite have been noted ? He was just 
such a man as that Peter shrank from seeing him ; and it took 
a miracle to overcome the prejudice. And yet he was "devout, 
and one that feared God, gave much alms to the people, and 



CHAPTER II. 89 

prayed to God always." Now, what would naturally happen 
upon Peter's visit ? First, there would be a ^^ Judgment " and 
let us trace the use of that word in other sentences. See just 
below in the present chapter : " Shall not the uncircumcision, 
if it fulfil the law, judge thee, who, with the letter and circum- 
cision art a transgressor of the law ? " As though a man 
should say, Does not this peasant with his splendid taste, 
though he has never seen an easel in his life, judge thee who, 
an idiot in taste, hast nevertheless been painting nearly all 
thy days ? And then a more marked case : " But if all proph- 
esy, and there come in one that believeth not, he is convinced 
of all, he is judged of all : and thus are the hidden things 
of his heart made manifest " (i Cor. 15 : 25). Here we are 
helped forward to this second expression. Now, to sum all 
up. What does Cornelius encounter when he encounters the 
gospel? If hthdiS ^^ hidden things" oi righteousness, as the 
account assures us he had, or, as Peter expresses it, ''the 
hidden man of the heart " (i Pet. 3 : 4), and not " the hidden 
things of shame " (2 Cor. 4 : 2), or '' the hidden things 
of darkness " (i Cor. 4:5), then, "by Jesus Christ through 
the gospel'' his ^"^ hidden things " will he judged j that is, that 
dawning " righteousness,'' which is neither law-satisfying right- 
eousness, nor down-tending, increasing, impenitent wickedness, 
will be found out or get a judgment, and will be found to have 
been made possible by the redemption of Christ, wrought by 
His grace, and in this way ^^ judged " joyfully when it meets " the 
gospel." This is a grand text, incapable of any allusion to 
the Last Day ; illustrating as the yap implies, how, even in 
extreme cases, " the doers of the law will be made ?'ighteous," (v. 
13) ; and illustrating that grand fact, that though a man may 
get repentance very rarely without a pretty extensive knowledge 
of Christ, yet he may and does, sometimes with very little, and 
that if he does, no matter how he gets it, he has been bor?i again ; 
that is, if any man becomes a better man, when all impenitent 
men steadily grow worse, he has in some way got hold of God, 
probably like Cornelius, by praying to God daily ; and how 
little " law " this requires no mortal knows. If, like Sinai, it 



90 ROMANS. 

includes the gospel, a man, like Abraham, may have but little 
" law,'' and yet emerge as the very "father of believers." 

"But if." We need say nothing of the various reading; 
here, "ide (E.V.). Paul seems to have written d6l. 

17. But if thou art by name a Jew, and restest upon 
law, and boastest thyself in God, 18. And understandest 
the will, and judgest between things that differ, being 
instructed out of the law, 19. And art confident about 
thyself that thou art a guide of the blind, a light of them 
who are in darkness, 20. A corrector of the foolish, a 
teacher of babes, having the forming of the knowledge 
and of the truth in the law, 2 1 . Then, the teacher of others,, 
teachest thou not thyself? the preacher that there must 
be no thieving, dost thou thieve? 22. Thou who say est 
that there must be no adultery, dost thou commit 
adultery? thou who hast disgust for idols, dost thou 
strip temples? 23. Being a man who boastest thyself in 
law, by the transgressing of the law dishonor est thou 
God? 24. For the name of God is blasphemed among 
the Gentiles because of you, just as it has been written. 

"But." This apostolic ^^ but" means to say, If, in addition 
to Judging (v. i), and in divers manners holding thyself above 
the sweep of the general condemnation, thou hast, either by 
birth or proselytism, the "name" of "a Jew," then pre- 
tensions, if false, are naturally more insidious, for "thou 
restest" and "boastest" and "art confident" in divers 
ways which he describes. He begs to know if teaching does 
not \m.\Ay dot7ig (v. 21), even more than hearing does (v. 13). 
The whole argument is cumulative, but does not depart from 
being general. If he mentions the " Jew,'' he accomplishes 
side purposes, of course, but not for an instant by abandoning 
his thread. The Jew is his intense illustration ; and in the 
hub of the universe, which was then Rome, he wishes to start 
upon his gospel with '' all the world guilty before God " 
(3 : 19). "Understandest the will." If Paul meant '■'■of 
God" (see E. V. & Re.), why did he not say so? If a man 
thinks he should interpolate '' his " (E. V. & Re.) into the 
English, why was it absent from the Greek ? We know very 
little of the psychology of Paul, but if he meant exactly what 



CHAPTER II. 9X 

he has written, and meant to attribute to the Rabbis theoretic 
teachings about ^^ wilV (and Paul knew, for he had sat at 
their feet), it would be a fine prelude to what immediately 
succeeds; for, discussing the proper choices of ^^ the will ^'* 
that is, judging between things that differ, was a great 
stroke in the casuistry of Israel. ' Thou who makest the nicest 
moral distinctions for the direction of the will, why dost thou 
flout them by all iniquity?' "Art by name." The verb 
means to add a name ; and that is exactly what Paul does. 
He adds the consideration of being a Jew to others previously 
stated. But unfortunately for this nicety of speech, the word 
means simply to name in other places (LXX. Gen. 4:17, 26). 
"Law" and "the law" are distinctions strictly kept up 
throughout the passage. "Forming." Mop^cj^^c is not the 
same as fiop(^ij. ^LKaiuaig (5 : 18) is not the same as dtKalu/ia. 
(5 : 16, 18). AcKaicjGcc means the act of making righteous. 
So fiopcptoaig means the ^'forming " or throwing into form.. 
That the Jews had the ^^form" of "knowledge" was true. 
But that they undertook the ^^ forming "of it by teaching 
and correcting opens them still more to the attack of the 
apostle. " The knowledge and the truth." We must observe 
the article. "In the law." All '' knowledge " and all '' truth " 
was '''■ inthe law,'' even, as we have seen, ^' the knowledge'' oi 
the gospel. The scribes and Pharisees sat in Moses' seat. 
If they could inwardly have "instructed out of the law," 
they would have saved every body. But they could only 
accomplish the ^6p<puaLq, They could form the truth, and 
throw it into theory. And Paul is about to show them (v. 28) 
that " he is not a Jew who is one hy roi (pavepu (that is, in 
a way that can be exhibited in speech) ; for he has just been 
saying (v. 27) that there were those who, along with the 
letter and circumcision, were transgressors of law ; but 
that he is a Jew who is one h tcj kpvtttcj (see " the hid- 
den things'' spoken of above, v. 16), " and circumcision is 
of the heart, in spirit, not in letter (not in any way that 
men could ^^ form " by instructing in the truth), whose praise 
is not of men, but of God." 



92 ROMANS. 

"Strip temples." We know nothing about this, ^vhi 
was by the law of reprisals, and in maritime language was the 
forfeiture of a ship, 'i tpoavXoi were those who took some 
such step against temples ; but how, or why, or for what uses, 
we are utterly uninformed. "Correctors of the foolish." 
would naturally have " the name of God blasphemed " if 
they stripped one sanctuary to adorn another. 

25. For circumcision indeed profits if thou dost ob- 
serve law ; but if thou be a transgressor of law, thy circum- 
cision has become uncircumcision. 

Paul has a wholesome horror of undervaluing Judaism. 
Sixty years before it was the only religion. In the chapter be- 
low he is to discuss that subject : " What advantage hath the 
Jew ? and what profit is there of circumcision ? " (v. i). He had 
already announced the gospel as being to " the Jew first and 
also to the Greek" (i: i6). And though he had observed the 
same order of priority for the curses of the gospel (v. 9), he 
had been very careful to repeat it as to the blessings (v. 10). 
There is no mystery. The trained man is most cursed, and, in 
the other event, most blessed. In the world, at the time, most 
were Jews who were of the number of the disciples. Peter 
swept three thousand of them into an acquaintance with the 
Redeemer. At the same time they were the most cursed. God 
forbid that we should disparage training. It is the recruiting 
school of the Redeemer. But God forbid that we should deny 
that Daniel Webster is more responsible than Sin Fong, and 
must do better than mere ^'■forming the truth'' (v. 20), or else 
perish with a two-fold penalty. "Thy circumcision." Just 
like thy " baptism " (6 : 4;Heb. 6: 2). These words became 
beautifully inclusive (Col. 2 : 11 ; i Pet. 3 : 21). "Has become 
uncircumcision ; " and, as we have seen, the most hideous 
form of it. 

2^. If, therefore, the uncircumcision observe the right- 
eous-making provisions of the law, shall not his uncircum- 
cision be reckoned for circumcision? 27. And shall not 
the uncircumcision, w^hich is by nature, if it fulfil the law, 
judge thee who, along with the letter and circumcision, art 
a transgressor of law ? 28. For not one who is so in what 



CHAPTER II. 93 

is apparent, is a Jew, nor is that which is so in what is 
apparent in the flesh, circumcision. 29. But one who is so 
in what is hidden is a Jew, and circumcision is of the 
heart, in spirit, not in letter, whose praise is not from men 
but from G-od. 

" The uncircumcision ; " all those who have not had the 
advantages of the Jew (Rom. 3 : i etc). "Righteous-making 

provisions." AiKaiufia does not mean " rigAfeoiisness," but any 
" provision " or ordinance that was to make righteous either a 
person or an act. Let us repeat the tracing of our meanings. 
Ak?? means what is right. MKatoq means right., and is ap- 
plied to persons or to things. The English usage translates it 
^' righteous" when applied to persons, and hence, not neces- 
sarily, but often, when applied to acts. " Righteousness " 
(diKaioGvyTj) is the noun from this adjective. AcKaluaic is the 
noun for making either a man or thing right or righteous. 
And dinaiu/Lca is the thing or act or process gone through with 
to that regard. There were two covenants, one " the old 
covenant " which enjoined the gospel and all other ordinances 
of the law (Heb. 8 : 9), and the other, " the new covenant" which 
added to this, effectual or actual grace. One wrote out the law 
and thundered it from Sinai, gospel and all, and it was 
" righteous-making'' in this, that the soul that hearkened would 
live thereby (Deut. n : 27). Moses constantly said so, 
(Lev. 18 : 5); and millions did live, because the " new cove- 
nant "was active also in that day. "The old covenant " 
gendered to bondage (Gal. 4 : 24) because, taking one of its 
commands, for example, " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ 
and thou shalt be saved " (Acts 16 : 31), it was perfectly 
inoperative unless the new covenant came in with its opera- 
tive grace. Still the old covenant was honest. Men would be 
saved if they would hearken and turn (Deut. 4 : 30, 31). And 
therefore, all through the Old Testament, 6LKaic}[iaTa was a 
favorite word (LXX.) for " old covenant" demands. "Statutes" 
they are often translated. Still oftener, " ordinances." It will 
be seen that our Revisionists say " ordinances'' here. Zecharias 
was represented as " in all the dLKaLuixaat of the Lord blameless" 



94 ROMANS. 

(Lu. i: 6). Still \h^'-^ righteous-making''' idea should be kept. 
It was not a sure enough " righteous-making ^ When Moses 
said, "This do and thou shalt live" (Lev. i8 : 5 ; Lu. 10 : 
28), he was not, indeed, mocking the impenitent ; nor was he 
saying that they could " do " without grace, or that they would 
" do " perfectly or meritoriously with grace ; but he was de- 
claring that all that was promised would be complied with ; 
that all that was necessary to life was thundered out of the 
mountain ; that the manna and the rod and the tables 
were summaries of the gospel ; that any who listened 
would be saved (and many who listened were saved) ; but 
that " the old covenant " must have the benefit of ** the 
new covenant," and that \h^^^^^ righteous-making'' dit.m.dSi^% 
should write them on the heart, that God might be our God, and 
we genuinely and evVw Kpvi^n^, not " in letter" but " in spirit " 
(Jo. 4 : 23), His believing people. This is the mystery of "the 
two covenants," so hideously abused as to have given a name, 
and that a mistranslated one, to the older and younger parts 
of our inspired Bible. " Be reckoned for ;" that is, be or sta^id 
for, just as Abraham's " faith " was actually " righteousness," 
that is, the germ or dawning of it (Matt. 17 : 20 ; 2 Cor. 5 : 7). 
*« Which is by nature ^\(pijaLg from 0{;w, see v. 14). "If it fulfil 
the law ; " that is, incipiently so, and with the earnest of bet- 
ter, as with any Christian. The word is not TrA^pdw, but te1el6u. 
Job was called (LXX.) Teleioq (" perfect ") ; though poor Job 
was any thing but perfect. The meaning is, reach its end. The 
gospel may reach its end when it is any thing but perfect in the 
mind of the sinner. "Judge thee." Paul has brought the 
case completely round. Now it is the despised Greek that 
"judgeth" (vs. 1-3), and that in this case rightfully, the con- 
temptuous Pharisee. " Along with the letter and circum- 
cision." This is one of the known uses of dm. " By " (E. V.) 
is a mistranslation. " This is he who came by (E. V.) water and 
blood" (i Jo. 5 : 6) means 7£fith it as a signal accompaniment. 
So ^^ by (E. V.) prophecy" (see Comment, i: 11 ; also i Tim. 
4: 14). "In what is apparent." " Outward/y" (E. V. 
tS: Re.) is not enough. 'Ev ypd/^/zan ("in letter ") is more 



CHAPTER II. 95 

than outward. Paul has been admitting deep pretensions. 
Though I have all knowledge, he says in another place (i Cor. 
13 : 2). Knowi7ig the will., and judging things that differ., in- 
structed out of the law., having the ^'■forming of knowledge^'' and 
being teachers diVidi preachers and deep readers in religion, follow- 
ing " the letter " with the most painstaking hope, " outwardly " 
is too light an expression. They were Jews hv rcj <^avep'u>., and 
close up to that sense. We would better translate literally. They 
were Jews to all appearance, not only to other eyes, but in- 
wardly (E. V. & Re.) to their own. And, therefore, Paul 
makes a much higher exaction. He is a Jew who is one 
"inwhat is hidden " (just the expression he uses of some 
heathen, see above, v. 16). Circumcision is not that which 
is "in what is apparent in the flesh ; but circumcision is of 
the heart" (just as baptism is: see this often repeated — 
Deut. 10 : 16 ; 30 : 6 ; Acts i : 5), "inspirit (that is, in the 
God-part of man, Jo. 4 : 23, 24, meaning his conscience), 
not in letter " (for " the letter killeth ; " yea, though " I have 
all knowledge I am nothing," i Cor. 13: 2) : "whose;" 
probably a neuter : '^circumcision'' is feminine, and 'lovdaZof is 
too far off : neuter in all probability for the whole character 
as stated ; " whose praise is not from men, but from God." 
Probably no dozen verses of the Bible (unless it be i Cor 13) 
describe a counterfeit where- " in what appears,'' both outward 
and inward, there is a closer resemblance to piety. " The hid- 
den things " (vs. 16, 29) are what Paul insists upon : not 
that our life ought not to shine forth, but that counterfeit- 
ing is too deep an art. What a man really is, " the Day will 
declare " (i Cor. 3 : 13). It is " the hidden man of the heart " 
(i Pet. 3:4). And sin so obscures our piety, that, with the 
best of us, for the most part, our " life is hid with Christ in 
God " (Col. 3 : 3). 



96 ROMANS. 



CHAPTER III. 

A man's being a Jew being no certainty that he is a believer^ 
and in Elijah's time, to all appearance, much the other way ; 
and *' anger and wrath, distress and anguish (being) to the Jew 
first," 

1. What then is the advantage of the Jew, and what the 
profit of the eireumeision ? 2. Much everyway: for, as 
the very first thing indeed, the fact that the oracles of 
God were believed. 3. For what if some did not believe ? 
Shall their unbelief make the faith in God utterly in vain ? 
4. Be it not so ! But let God turn out true and every man 
a liar, as it has been written : 

That thou mightest be made righteous in thy words, 

And triumph when thou art judged. 

"What then is the advantage?" The twelve baskets 
that were left over were described by this same word (Matt. 
14 : 20). It means surplus^ or what flowed over. " Where sin 
abounded, grace did much more abound" (TTEptoaevo) ). He had 
made " the Jew first " in everything, so that, under the sever- 
ities of the last chapter it became well to know what the nepioabv 
or abounding over consisted in. " Oracles." Ldyof means word^ 
but "koyia {^^ oracles ") means something more ecclesiastical or 
sacred. "Were believed." It will not hurt to resume the 
thread of the apostle, and to do it often. It is of wonderful 
effect in binding this Greek together. Righteousness is a noun 
answering to righteous, and righteous is an adjective answering- 
to diKTi, what is right. This right is moral, and never wanders 
from a moral signification, except as holiness does, or cleanness 
does, or, notoriously, any word may, in well-understood rhe- 
torical aberrations. When I say, The priest shall make him 
clean (in a case of leprosy. Lev. 13 : 13), I understand, make 
him out clean, or " pronounce him clean " (E. V.). " Thy name 
be m^de holy " is not a thought that I stop or hesitate upon in 
the Lord's prayer. So, then, when I read of righteousness, as 
applied to men, I remember holiness and cleanness as applied to 
the same erring creatures, and it balks me but little tO' 



CHAPTER III. 



97 



affix the necessary limitations. Righteousness^ as applied to 
Eve, would be perfect ; but righteous7iess, as applied to Seth, 
would really be less sinfulness, just what Seth's holiness would 
be, along with all the ideas of its being an earnest of 
more, and badge of that pardon of sin which has 
procured it, in eternal mercy. It is for this reason that we are 
said to be '' made righteous in [His] blood " (5 : 9). But 
what breeds righteousness ? or, coming still closer to the fact, 
what is righteousness ? It is a new moral light. '^ This is life 
eternal, to know thee" (Jo. 17 : 3) ; "The eyes of your 
understanding being enlightened " (Eph. i : 18) ; "God, who 
commanded the light to shine out of darkness, (having) shined 
into our hearts ; " and so we are to understand the genesis of 
the Christian. We may get rid of Oriental speech and say, 
It is having a better conscience. But when, in answer to 
prayer, this better conscience appears, or when, convinced that 
I am a sinner, I ask God for moral light and He gives it to me, 
a favorite expression of the whole is that He gives me ^^ faith." 
It is sometimes described by saying that He gives me " repent- 
ance" (2 Tim. 2 : 25), and sometimes that He gives me "obe- 
dience" (16 : 26 ; I Pet. 1:2). The fundamental fact is that 
He hath made me righteous. But as this righteousness is very 
imperfect, and rather a seed or seal of what is to be, than 
anything but sinfulness, Paul calls it "faith." It is an epitome 
of history. It is isogonous with repentance. It is isometric. 
It is, in the grace of it, identical. It is " righteous " for the same 
reason, viz., its possession of a moral light. It is the fruit of 
a moral change. And, therefore, it is a favorite word for 
'^righteousness.'' Instead of ^''righteousness'' being its result 
{ox holiness €\\h^x., Hodge's Syst. Theol. vol. 3 : p. 108), except 
as one degree of holiness is the result of another, it is itself 
" righteousness," and so splendid an account of it that when 
Abraham performed that wonderful act of faith in offering 
his son, we are told in terms, that his '■^ faith " was reckoned 
^^ righteousness" "d^xA^OMXA have been just that perfectly but 
for the same imperfection by which " righteousness " itself is 
a name for less sinfulness. 



98 ROMANS. 

Of course this is not to forget that faith is faith, and has in 
it the element of believing ; any more than that hope expects, 
and love dotes, and joy has the element of pleasure, yet 
neither of these is saving till it is holy. We cannot be saved 
except by seeking God. But we cannot seek God, except as 
the impenitent do, who only thereby bring themselves nearer 
to grace till grace actually flows in, and then hope and joy and 
faith, and all the exercises of righteousness are simultaneous 
gifts, bestowed upon common faith, and in answer graciously 
to the prayer of the impenitent. 

*' What advantage then has the Jew ! " Why Paul fairly leaps 
to an answer ! " Much every way." He has an embarras 
des richesses. And after saying, " First and foremost," his zeal 
exhausts itself upon that. "What profit of circumcision? " 
Why, this profit, Paul declares (and lo ! with what wonderful 
sight he touches the blessing), that, while the whole world was 
lying in wickedness, millions of the Jews repented and " believed'' 
What other blessing was there ? The meaning of the apostle, 
therefore, is that " the advantage of the Jew" was that millions 
of them became " righteous^'' or better men, and that the shape 
of their betterment was the same as with Abraham, and that their 
faith, dawning with moral light upon themselves and upon 
their Maker, was reckoned for just what it was, an incipient 
righteousness. But now certain confessions ! First, we stand 
alone, in this English ; but that makes little difference, for the 
appeal can be only to the Greek. Second, ^^ oracles" are 
plural, and neuter plurals usually call for a singular verb. 
Third, " were entrusted with " (Re.) or " had committed to them " 
(E. V.) is a repeated idiom of Paul. " I have been entrusted 
with a dispensation" (i Cor. 9:17). "I have been put in 
trust with the gospel" (Gal. 2 : 7). " Which was committed 
to my trust" (i Tim. i : 11). "To be put in trust with the 
gospel" (i Thess. 2 : 4). Fourth, it is an idiom that makes 
sense. Now, therefore, it is just there that we start our reply. 
And we say, first, that it does not make 77iuch sense. Con- 
sidering that Paul gave density to everything, he did not give 
much when he said that they had the ^^ oracles." What is that 



CHAPTER III. 99 

greatly more than saying that a Jew ^'s a Jew. Second, 
^^wei-e believed" is plural, " /^<? y<?ze/ " is singular. Therefore, 
thirdly, ^^ were believed'' may have been made plural for the 
very purpose of distinction. Had it been made singular it 
might necessarily be connected with ^'' the Jew.'' Whereas, as 
a neuter plural, plenty of exceptions warrant the other refer- 
ence. Neuters that are massed, agree with the singular ; but 
neuters that are individual, and seem separable in their make, 
claim a plural ; and in fact these idiosyncrasies in grammar 
allow no end of freedom. Fourth, the sentence " What if 
some did not believe ? " is almost unmeaning unless for this 
plainer sense. Fifth, this commoner sense occurs likewise with 
Paul in other writings. " Our testimony was believed " 
(2 Thess. I : 10, E. V.). " Believed on in the world" (i Tim. 
7 : 16). And sixth, the ov TravTug (" nol all together"^, of which 
we have much to say below (v. 9), loses infinitely there but 
for this simpler expression. Our understanding, therefore, 
makes out this significance for Paul, — That ^' the Jew" had 
great *' advantage " because millions of them will be found in 
heaven. " For what if some did not believe ? " That of course is 
the proper question if the other is the proper beginning of the 
context. " Shall their unbelief make the faith in G-od 
utterly in vain ? " 

We cannot understand this till we are informed of their 
Rabbinical conceits. They had this quaint teaching : " No 
drop of Abraham's blood can come within a billion of miles of 
the Great Gehenna, be there only lawful circumcision." This 
was Paul's "other gospel " (Gal. i : 6). Hence the reason of 
his cry, "Circumcision availeth nothing" (Gal. 5 : 6). Hence 
their "endless genealogies" (i Tim. i : 4). And hence the 
reasoning of Paul. 

Their ^^ faith in God" carried with it the idea that all would 
pull through, with some chastisements no doubt (Ps. 89 : 32), 
whether they believed or not. And Paul does not stop just 
now to take up the unsoundness of their '•'■ faith" but grapples 
them just here, Is God to be " true" or they ? Undoubtedly 
God spoke of apostate and damned Jews. They themselves 
turned men out of their synagogues. There must be a false 



loo ROMANS. 

thinking somewhere ; and he boldly taxes it upon them, 
^^ For what if some did not believe" (and therefore according to 
their own Scriptures perished, Ps. 95 : 11) " shall their unbelief 
make the faith in God'' (that is, the proper confidences in which 
Moses had steeped the nation) " utterly in vain ? Be it not so ! 
But let God be made out true and every man a liar, as it 
is written— 

That Thou miglitest be made righteous in Thy words, 

And triumph when Thou art judged." 

It is not the ''faith " (E. V.) or ''faithfulness (Re.) of 
God" but that "faith of (in) God" which is expressed by the 
same language in another place (Mar. 11 : 22). Paul could 
scarcely have imagined that the Jews believed that all of 
Abraham's circumcised children should certainly be saved, 
but he denounced their "faith " as only satisfied by that, and 
then he denounced that as glaringly against the oracles of 
God. "Be it not so." " God forbid" (E. V. and Re.) 
obliterates the "but" in the next sentence, and substitutes 
"Yea" (E. V. and Re.). But " but" {6k) is the language 
of the apostle. " Let God turn out true." This is characteristic- 
ally Hebrew. It is a Hebraistic use of the Greek in two par- 
ticulars. In the first place it is intense prediction in the shape 
of an imperative. When Isaiah says, " Make the heart of this 
people fat" (Is. 6 : 10), who will understand it as a command ? 
And in the second place, it is making God true or God's 
becoming true (-yivEadu) in the sense of his turning out or 
being shown to be. The last of these particulars is to be 
noted where Christ commands his disciples to say, " Hallowed 
be (dyiaadriTO)) Thy name " (Matt. 6 : 9). 

The Hebrew will deceive us, however, unless we erect a 
guard. When the priest 'cleansed the leper. King James 
wisely translates it, " pronounced him clean ; " when ho^ fouled 
him (for that is the Hebrew), he "pronounced him unclean" 
(E. v., Lev. 13 : 3). Solomon is intense in this half-wild 
rhetoric. He speaks of the Almighty, " I saw under the 
sun the Place of Judgment," and then he has absolutely 
blinded us to the sense by saying " that wickedness was 



CHAPTER III. loi 

there ! " for indeed the Orientals were not afraid of such 
things ; " and the Place of Righteousness that iniquity was 
there." Solomon recovered himself by saying, " God shall 
judge" (Ec. 3 : 17), and Paul correspondingly sdiys,^^ He shall 
become true " {yLviadu) ! or, as the next clause words it, 
" fhal thou may est be ?nade righteous in thy words ^ and triumph 
when thou art judged'' 

Hort and Westcott are more ornamental. They read 
vLKTiauqy throwing away the subjunctive ; '■'■ That thou 
mightest be made righteous in thy words, and then " (the Kai 
is quite sufficient for that), '■^ thou wilt triumph when thou art 
judged'' Their authority, being only A, D, N, is not sufficient, 
however. 

So much for one of the intermediate cavils before we come 
to the more important matter in the ninth and twentieth 
verses. Now for another. 

If sin breeds this '•^triumph," why punish it ? Paul simply 
recites this sophistry, and leaves the answer to itself. In fact 
the Jews had hurled this very taunt at the doctrine of the 
disciples (v. 8). 

Let us translate : — 

5. But if our unrighteousness make complete the 
righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God un- 
righteous who inflicts the wrath ? I speak as a man. 6. Be 
it not so ! For then how shall God judge the world ? 
7. Yet if the truth of God abounded more in my lie to 
His glory, why still am I also judged as a sinner? 8. And 
why not (as we are slanderously charged, and as some 
aflarm that we say), Let us do the evil things that the 
good things may come, being persons whose damnation 
is just? 

"Our unrighteousness." The manifest subjective char- 
acter of this ^^unrighteousness" shames commentators into a 
like subjectiveness in what immediately follows. But why is 
this? If " the righteousness of God" is forensic almost 
every where, why vacillate ? Fluctuations under a theologic 
stress are the bane of anti-Papal interpretations. " Make 
complete." '■'■ Coinmend" (E. V. & Re.) is a narrow sense. 



I02 ROMANS. 

It springs in this way, — because a note of commendation brings 
people together. The wider significance is, — Cause to stand 
together (as though the verb were transitive, see Robinson). 
Hence in the Scriptures themselves, to frame, to throw into 
order, to " complete " is a usual sense. The passive [Anglice) 
serves as a translation of the active in two very striking texts : 
They are the following : — " The earth framed together out of 
the water and by means of the water " (2 Peter 3:5);*' And 
in Him " (viz., in Jesus of Nazareth), '' all things were framed 
together " (Col. 1:17). In Jesus Christ, originally and before 
He was born, the universe was framed together, so that with- 
out Him it would have been useless and incomplete. Paul 
borders on the same idea in respect to sin. What would 
" truth " be without it ? The devil had some sparks of light 
in the very darkness of the ^' tree of knowledge (Gen. 3:5). 
^^ Made complete;'' not absolutely. ^'' Made righteous'' (v. 4), 
rhetorically or declaratively so, just as " come to be true " (v. 4) is 
not to be taken absolutely, but in the way we have already 
explained. The belles-lettres sense is perfectly intelligible, 
and means an abounding or welling over (Trepiaaevu) in a 
way, man-ward, thoroughly evincive of " His glory." " What 
shall we say" then? "Is God unrighteous who inflicts 
the wrath?" Never! Paul retorts; for then, if that be 
dreamed, universal monarchy is at an end. But the cavil 
presses. Why ? Explain the difficulty. " If the truth of God 
abounded more in my lie to His glory, why still am I also 
judged as a sinner?" With startling summariness Paul 
manages the challenge thus : — If men really sin, they must be 
punished, or else what governs the world ? (v. 6). If sin 
*' completes " the Almighty in the sense of His largest ^^ glory," 
either this must be a mere incident, and men go on to be 
punished, which is what the apostle would aver, or else sin is 
no sin at all. We are to esteem it very highly in love for its 
work's sake ; and Paul evolves the consequence in so dis- 
gusting a shape as to need no further setting back. 

This argument is good enough if moderns would leave the 
conditions of it alone. But, unfortunately, things more dis- 



CHAPTER III. 103 

gusting than Paul would use to drive us back are put into the 
very bosom of God's Providence. Under such treatment 
Paul's appeal perishes. That God damns the wicked for dis- 
play, silences all appeal to mere disgust on the other side. 
Better no punishment than such a punishment as that. Nor 
has there been the least reason for such a gloss. That God 
builds Tophet for " His glory " is true, so long as we give 
''''glory'' its literal sense of weight or excellence. That He 
punishes the wicked to do right, a little child might 
accept as sufficiently complete. That He even curses the 
wicked for display is true, if we make the end inter- 
mediate and secondary (Ps. 79 : 9 ; Rom. 9 : 23; 2 Cor. 
3 : 18) ; but that He torments the wicked simply to exhibit 
anything ; or to state it in theologic phrase, that His chief end 
is to glorify Himself, is horrible, and might well defy disgust 
at no punishment at all as a mere platitude on the part of the 
apostle. Such thoughts have been a brutal trait in Reformed 
theology. A certain Providence is right. It may be boldly 
said that there is but one such Providence for all the universe. 
God has spied it out. Part of this Providence is Hell. God 
builds Hell in spite of His pity. But His motive is simply 
fight [6iKri). A lesser end may be to display all this : and 
why? Because '•''therein the righteousness of God is revealed.'' 
Making ^'' the wrath descend" is a necessary discipline. All 
this is true. But when, untying from the main idea that the 
thing is rights we make the main idea to be the display, — shame 
upon such a following of the Almighty. Philosophers laugh 
at it (Mill, Ex. of Ham., Amer. Ed., Vol. i, p. 221), and justly 
denounce it, and only unjustly when they do as we do, and call 
any such thing divine. We make the enemies of God to blas- 
pheme. To show God's own '-^glojy" illustratively to be the end 
of His creation is to brutalize His work, and to forget His glory 
itself, I mean His unspeakable " righteousness." 

9. Why then do we not win the advantage for ourselves 
all together ? for we laid it down as the pre-occasion, that 
both Jews and Greeks are all under sin ; 10. As it has 
been written, 



I04 ROMANS. 

There is none righteous, no not one. 

11. There is none who understands, there is none who 

seeks diligently after God. 

12. They have all turned aside; they are together be- 

come useless ; 
There is none that does useful things; no, not so 
much as one. 

13. Their throat is an open sepulchre ; 

With their tongues they have used deceit ; 
The poison of asps is under their lips. 

14. Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. 

15. Their feet are swift to shed blood. 

16. Destruction and misery are in their ways ; 

17. And a way of peace have they not known. 

18. There is no fear of God before their eyes. 

19. But we know that what things the law says it speaks 
to those who are under the law, that every mouth may 
be stopped, and all the world come under penalty to 
God. 20. Because by works of law shall no flesh be made 
righteous in His sight ; for by law is the fuller knowl- 
edge of sin. 

This whole chapter has been beset with riddles. Dr. Hodge 
far back in its paragraphs, stops at a certain text and com- 
plains, '' This verse is very difficult " (v. 3). llpoEx^i^^^a (v. 9) in 
the track of the expositors, looks like a spot in the road where 
a hay wagon has been overturned, muddied with feet and lit- 
tered with the hay that has run to waste. Our English Ver- 
sion has it, ^'' Are we better?''' and supplies '■^ than they'' to 
promote the sense. The Revision is just the opposite ! ** Are 
we in worse case than they ? " Wetstein reads, " Are we sur- 
passed " (by the Jews) ? CEcumenius, " Are we surpassed " 
(by the Gentiles) ? Reiche, " Are we preferred " (by God) ? 
Wahl, "What can we bring forward" (as excuse)? Godet, 
** Are we sheltered?" Kindred trouble surrounds ov Trdvrwc 
{''No, in nowise,'' E. V. and Re.). Van Hengel, says Winer 
(Am. Ed., p. 555), *' despaired," etc., and concluded there must 
be unnoted corruption textually. " Meyer even finds himself 
obliged to abandon his philological rigorism " (so says Godet 
in loco), and is actually driven to a "second " and scarce de- 
fensible sense. When such things occur, one maxim all will 



CHAPTER III. 105 

encourage — to abandon speculation, and come right down to 
the letter of the Greek. What does it radically mean? 
Ilpoexoueda I what is that ? It occurs but once in the Testament, 
and is made up of npo and ix^^- Hpo means before^ and ixi^ means 
to hold or have. If a man uses a shield, it is proper to say, He 
holds it before, npoexei- This word is either passive or middle. 
We can take our choice. If middle, it means, JVe hold our- 
selves before or get ourselves into the advance. How could we 
come more honestly by a sufficient meaning ? " Why then do we 
not get ourselves into the advance,'' or " win for ourselves the ad- 
vantage ? " Let us trace the grammar first, and Paul after- 
ward. That is a safe course, and will have the prevailing right 
-over different expositions, oi Trdvrwf never means ^^ not at all.'* 
If it does, show the instance. ndvrwf ov would be that, and 
would give us the right for " No, in no wise " (E. V. and Re.). 
Ov Travv has been thought to give a color that way in a certain 
passage (see Meyer), but even there there may be supposed 
an irony (see Schoemann, ad Is., p. 276), just as Not quite ! 
is an ironical stroke for saying Never ! So then, according to 
the Greek, ov Trdvruc must, in some fashion, be woven in as mean- 
ing not all together. But how can that be done ? Meyer, in 
excuse for the violence that he confesses, holds out that it 
cannot be. But let us look at that. What if, as in many 
such cases, the tabooed idea should be proved to be the very 
best ? 

What has Paul been speaking of ? He has begun with the 
■question, " What advantage hath the Jew, and what profit is there 
.of circumcision ? " (E. V., v. i). The reply is, *' Much everyway.'* 
Then the specification of the " advantage " — that the " oracles," 
of course including the gospel, made many Jewish believers. 
Then comes the cavil. What if some did not believe ? And 
then, built up upon that, that other cavil. If, not believing, they 
glorified God, why punish ? Paul cuts his way through all 
this jungle, and comes out upon a still higher inquiry. What 
higher inquiry could there naturally be ? Repeating nothing, 
such as by saying, " Are we better than they ? " (E. V., Behlen), 
and confusing nothing, such as by saying, " Not at all " (E. V.) 



ip6 ROMANS. 

to the question " Are we better V (E. V.), or to the question^ 
** Are we worse ? " (Re.), or to the question, " Do we surpass ? " 
(De Wette, Alford), when he had said already. We had an 
''''advantage,'' and described it as ^'- much every way,'' a question 
arises which no exegete seems to have noticed, viz., Why, if 
all are sinners, " Jews and Greeks," and one of these classes, 
viz., Jews, have the enormous " adva?itage " of possessing 
"the law," and of having that ^^ law " include ^^ the gospel; " 
and, furthermore, of having that ^^j-/*^/ thundered out on Sinai, 
and of having it impressed by painful ceremonials, why, when 
many helped themselves forward (iTpoexofiac) unto life, or, 
as Paul expressed it, ^' the oracles were believed" (v. 2), did not 
all help themselves forward 1 or, returning to the Greek, 
"Why then do we not win the advantage for ourselves all 
together?" Paul is going to make this attack all the 
intricacies of salvation. He throws into a parenthesis 
(vs. 9-18) what will make it stand naked. We all start fresh, 
^^ Jews and Greeks." We all start sinners, utterly condemned. 
The Jews have the law which includes the gospel. Millions 
'''"believed" and snatched an ^^ advantage great every way." 
Now why did not all believe ? that is the point of the pas- 
sage. Having the same blessed " law" why did it not convert 
every body ? It is a question for all time. And what was 
there to blunt its edge, or to make it diverse, or to make it 
partial, or to keep it back from the uniformity that " all 
(should obey) the gospel (10:16)?" "Because" (the 
reply afterwards gives the solution) " out of works of law 
shall no flesh be made righteous " (v. 20). 

Here a wonderful confirmation is found in 61671 ; though 
again comes up a struggle of the commentators. Ll6tl is 
never illative in the indirect sense. The sequence ^^ Therefore " 
has marred the passage (E. V.). The linguists stop and look 
at this (Alford, Meyer), as Meyer stopped and looked at 
ov -n-avTug (3 : 9) ; and when the Revisionists amend, and 
translate "/;^^<2?^i-^," and reduce this verse to a confirmation 
of the last, they not only daze the reader by an imperfect 
sense, but they discredit Paul ; for so great a dialecti- 



CHAPTER III. 107 

cian would hardly enter so grand a sentence by so side a 
door. 

Throw out the poem (which, by the way, is shaped into one 
mainly by Paul), and throw out the remark (v. 19), that 
essential parts of it, being from the law (Ps. 5:9; 10:7; 14; 
T^d \ 53 ; 140; Isa. 59 : 7, 8), were meant for "those under 
the law," and we have this grandest answer to an emphatic 
text, " Why then do we not win the advantage for ourselves all 
together ? Because, out of works of law shall no fiesh be made 
righteoits in his sights ''No fiesh'' Alford makes something 
of the fact that the Greek reads " all fleshy " Out of works 
of law all flesh shall not be justified,'' i. e., as he expresses it, 
All flesh are in the condition not justified. But there seems no 
value in this, for the Hebraism that lodges this in the Greek 
has no such particularity (Mar. 13 : 20 ; i Cor. i : 29). We 
may notice however how the word '' all^ starting from the 
ninth, besets all the verses. "-Flesh." It does not say spirit. 
For the co7iscience (spirit) of a man, left to itself with the 
gospel, would turn to it at once. ''Made righteous.'' We 
need add nothing more. "Made" SLCtusilly " righteous" in 
that incipient degree which makes up in its very nature as love 
(Matt. 22 : 40) the differentia of saving faith. 

But now we arrive at the new phrase. Only Paul uses it. He 
has used it before, but in the singular number, " Who exhibit 
within the work of the law writte7t i?i their hearts "(2:15). He 
uses it nine more times, and always in the plural ; and he uses 
it only in two of his epistles, and we can quote him easily in 
every instance. The first three cases are from this same 
epistle. " We reckon that a man is made righteous by faith, 
aside from works of law " (3 : 28). " Not by faith, but, as it 
were, by works of law " (9 : 32). (Here law is thrown out by 
the Revisionists). Three of the remaining cases are in one 
verse to the Galatians, " Knowing that a man is not made 
righteous by works of law except by faith in Jesus Christ, we 
also believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be made righteous 
by faith in Christ, and not by works of law ; for by works of 
law shall no flesh be made righteous " (Gal. 2 : 16). 



io8 ROMANS. 

" Received ye the Spirit by works of law, or by hearing of 
faith ? " (Gal. 3 : 2). " He, therefore, that ministereth to you 
the Spirit, and creates active powers in you, doeth he it by 
works of law, or by hearing of faith ? " (Gal. 3 : 5). " As many 
as are by works of law are under a curse" (Gal. 3 : 10). If 
we can find out distinctly what " works of law " mean, we 
have greatly promoted our entire exposition. 

What do works of light mean ? There is no such scripture ; 
but what would it naturally mean ? Works begotten from a 
man by moral light. ''Works of darkness" (13: 12) are 
works that darkness sets forth from its seat in our nature. 
" The work of faith and labor of love" (i Thess. i : 3) are the 
literal thing, what faith works and what love works. "The 
works of the flesh" (Gal. 5 : 19) are the like; and so, "of 
God " (Jo. 6 : 28, 29), and " of the Devil " (i Jo. 3 : 8). They 
are works which a man does, but which no other principle or 
power or part of him does than that of which they are said to 
be the works. " The old man and his works" (Eph. 4 : 22), "and 
the works of the body" (8: 13), are of a like significance. 
There is a wonderful unanimity ; and therefore the analogy 
is entire by which ^' the works of the law'' distinctly arise 
into our view. What "the old man " can do when it is all that 
one has ; what " the body" can do when it masters " the spirit " ; 
what the Devil can do when he reigns ; or God has done when 
we believe ; what " darkness " or " faith " or " flesh " or " love " 
can be said to do when man acts under their influence ; that 
"/<22£/"can be said to do or to have as iX.^^'' works'' \i the 
thunder and imprint of the law is all that one has to depend 
upon to cleanse him or make him righteous. This is a critical 
sentence. When profoundly seated in a man, as " /^7£/ " was 
with the Jew, and when warmly boasted of by the man, as 
Paul was quick to picture (2 : 17) ; when thoroughly under- 
stood by the man, as it critically was ; and made to take in the 
gospel, as it undoubtedly did ; if it and nothing more gracious 
inspired its '■^ works," then by ^^works of law shall no flesh be 
made righteous." It is repeating only in different phrase that 
about " the letter and the spirit " (2 : 29). 



CHAPTER III. 109 

But let me be distinctly understood. Faith is incipient 
holiness. I hold that " law " cannot produce faith as one of 
its '^works'' And I hold that it can produce nothing, as 
*' light" can, and "faith " can, and "love " can, and as the 
Giver of all these, viz., God can, except that which is abreast 
of itself, viz. "knowledge;" and though I have all " knowl- 
edge," as Paul says, "I am nothing" (i Cor. 13 : 2). Men 
cannot be taught righteousness. Therefore the " work of the 
law'' is only a higher responsibility, or, as Paul declares it, 
"the" emyvuaig (v. 20), or higher "knowledge of sin." 

Going back therefore to our passage, each text lies in 
smooth consistency with this significance. The great end of 
religion is to ''^ make (men) righteous.'' For this, Christ was 
raised up. " Christ is the end of the law for righteousness 
(hoUness) to every one that believeth " (10 : 4). His very 
name is the token of His work, viz., to " save His people /r^7;z 
their sins." Now, the distinctions we are aiming to establish 
can perhaps be additionally noted by a return to the " cove- 
nants." The " old covenant," was full of the gospel. It 
contained nothing else. It was the gospel entire, because it 
was built upon a redemption entirely achieved. Its watch- 
word was, " Do this and thou shalt live " (Lu. 10 : 28). And 
what the sinner was to do, was, not to keep the -whole law. 
He was "a debtor to do the whole law" (Gal. 5 : 3) only if 
he broke the covenant. It was indeed said, " Cursed is every 
one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the 
law to do them " (Gal. 3 : 10) ; but that is said still. In the 
eye of grace that is still demanded. We are to repent of " all " 
sin, and obey " all " righteousnesses ; not perfectly : that is 
never said : but incipiently. We are to be born again. The 
change was to reach all our faculties. And what the old 
covenant did was to thunder that out. Along with the deca- 
logue, and as a needed part of it, was this — " Believe on the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved " (Acts 16 : 31). 
No statute breathed fiercer (Jo. 16 : 9 ; Mar. 16 : 16). And 
what was the " new covenant ? " Something more than the 
"new song" (Rev. 5 : 9), and better than the "new com- 



no ROMANS. 

mandment " (i Jo. 2 : 8), or the " new wine " (Matt. 26 : 29) ; 
for those were brighter and better instances of a thing with 
no advance upon its nature. But the '' new covenant " had as 
precise a difference as we can imagine. It was the " old 
covenant ''plus grace to obey it. Not a shred more did it pos- 
sess. Honesty was complete in either. Grace was the founda- 
tion of both. The " old " had sufficient for its maintenance, 
for it had provided that Christ should die. It lacked but one 
thing, not to make it honest, but to make it serviceable, and 
for that lack it *' gendered to bondage " (Gal. 4 : 24). Not 
one Israelite employed it, and all who were saved stepped 
over into that other "covenant," which is the sole dependency 
of ungodly men. Now let Jeremiah describe that needful 
difference. " I will make a new covenant ; not according to 
the covenant I made with their fathers, which my covenant 
they brake ; but this shall be the covenant, I will pat my law 
in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be 
their God, and they shall be my people" (Jer. 31 : 32, 33). 
Paul speaks of them (Gal. 3 : 16 ; Heb. 8 : 6), as both having 
*' promises," the " old covenant " kv ypdfiixari ('' in letter," 2 Cor. 
3 : 6). He elaborates Jeremiah, and makes him plainer. The 
" old covenant ; " was the whole gospel with one thing yet to be 
supplied, — power to keep it. The " new covenant " was all 
the " old " with the fatal necessity supplied, not, now, that 
there were such formal '' covenants " in different periods of 
time, but that this was the rhetoric of grace intended to 
describe just the points that we would now make clear. 
" Works of law " are what could be accomplished by " the 
old covenant," in point of grace just nothing at all. Nay, 
more comprehensive than that, for " works of law'' differ 
from the works of the law ; for this latter would include the 
gospel. But the former might never hear of Sinai ; and as 
Paul includes '^ Greeks" dJSi^^W as ^^ Jews" his sentence is 
universal. No light of law without grace to " write it on the 
heart " is any more than ypd/ijua (letter), and cannot reach 
£v roj /cpi»7rrtj (2 : 29) into the inward spirit. 

Now let us survey the instances (the ten given above). 



CHAPTER III. Ill 

" Who exhibit within the work of the laiv written in their hearts " 
(2 : 15). That is plain enough. It is the picture of poor Gen- 
tiles who, when favored Jews could not be " made righteous 
by works of law," because nobody can, are " made righteous " 
as ^^ doers of law'' (2 : 13) through rare grace in having ^^ the 
work of the law'' (that is, just such work as ^^ the law" which 
they had never heard of, by grace produces) " written," just 
as Jeremiah describes, " inwardly " upon the heart. Hence 
the importance of that word " except" (Gal. 2 : 16), which was 
so long omitted. That was a rare wrong in exegesis. It occurs 
fifty-nine times in the N. T., that expression Mi^//^, and 
always means except. Lo, for two centuries and over, it has 
stood ^^ but" (E. V.) in an important sentence. The Revision- 
ists restore it, but timidly, "A man is not justified by the 
works of the law, save through faith in Jesus Christ" (Re.). 
Why not say boldly " except," and not ^mI ^^ but only " m the 
margin,"^ especially as hav «?; never means '' but 07ily ? " " A man 
is not made righteous by works of law, except by faith in Jesus 
Christ." That is, " law," even if it include the gospel, never 
can convert a man unless " mixed with faith in them that hear 
it" (Heb. 4: 2): for "the letter killeth " (2 Cor. 3 : 6). But 
when its works are written on the heart " (2 : 15), then a man 
is converted, and that covers the exception in the text, " except 
by faith in Jesus Christ " (Gal. 2 : 16). 

The remaining texts in Romans we will leave till we reach 
them. In Galatians we have what is appended to the last 
treated sentence : *' That we might be made righteous by faith 
in Christ, and not by works of law " (of course, from what we 
have already seen) ; " for by works of law " (repeating the 
sentence that we are now discussing), " shall no flesh be made 
righteous " (Gal. 2 : 16). " As many as are by works of law " 
(that is, as many as are what they are by what works unaided 
law can work in them) " are under a curse " (Gal. 3 : 10): and 
who doubts it ? or who doubts a still heavier curse, if that 

* Our American committee favored the retention of "/5m/"(E. V.), and 
requested it to be marked in their exceptions to the work of the British ! 
(See Appendix, Re,). 



112 ROMANS. 

" law " happen to include the gospel (Ps. 8i : 7-13 ; 105 : i-io ; 
Jo. 15 : 22) ; for the "gospel" must be made ^'- the power of 
God^'' and has been so made by " effectual calling " to every 
one that believes (i : 16). Then follow two sentences which 
seem to settle the whole thing. " Received ye the Spirit " 
(what has that to do with Lutheran ^^justification " modernly 
so called?). "Received ye the Spirit " (what is that but, 
Were ye made holy, righteous) ; or, sweeping in the next in- 
stance, " He that ministereth to you the Spirit, etc., etc., (doeth 
He it, E. V.) by works of law or by the hearing of faith " (Gal. 
3 : 2, 5)? These are all the cases in the Bible of that Pauline 
expression. 

Now to resume. " Laid it down as a pre-oecasion." This 
is an aorist. The ^fjS does not refer to what " we before "(Re., see 
also E. V.) did, but to the condition or occasion or, if we please, 
accusation precedent, which makes us all alike. If out of this 
dead level of condemnation {ivdtKoq)^ many who had the law 
escaped, why did not all ? "Written." Well, much of this 
was never written before, but, " as it has been written," — 
that is true literally. " Seeks " (v. 11). The Ik before c^^rwv 
ought to have its influence ; for many do ^^ seek " (Lu. 13 : 24) 
who do not seek "diligently." Paul is full of such delicate 
particularities. " Useless. " Bentham, if he would supply a 
moral sense, would be a good measurer of piety (Matt. 13 : 23 ; 
I Jo. 3 : 7). See " useful things " just afterwards. " Blood" 
(v. 15). Two reasons account for this strong language, first, that 
the most modest sin as measured by human eye, in the divine eye 
is cruel (Ps. 90 : 11 ; Prov. 12 : 10 ; Hab. i : 13), and second, 
that these are the reaches to which sin will advance, and to 
which it is constantly arriving even in this world. "Under 
penalty." {^^vduioq, v : 19) ; a word but once used by Paul. 
"By" (v. 20). It might be stronger to say ^^ from'' or ^^ out 
of" for the word is e/c, not dm, and in all cases the difference is 
intentional (i: 17; 3: 30; 4:16; i Cor. 8:6); but trans- 
lators avoid changing, because the words might be ambiguous. 
If I say " 7nade righteous from works " it jingles sadly like away 
from works, and if I say out of, that sounds like aside from. 



CHAPTER III. 113 

Let it be only understood that Ik means that a man can 
not even begin a holiness out of such " works " as " law " by 
itself can inspire. 

21. But now, aside from law, the righteousness of God 
has been manifested, being borne witness to by the law 
and the prophets, 22. But the righteousness of God by 
faith in Jesus Christ unto all them that believe, for there 
is no difference ; 23. For all sinned, and are short of the 
glory of God, 24. Being made righteous as a gift by His 
grace, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus ; 

" But now." Always, indeed, " but 7iow " with a manifestness 
giving less room for mistake. "Aside from law." "Right- 
eousness" never can be aside froi7i law " in most senses, for 
one is but the fulfilment of the other ; but that great light of 
" righteousness " in the soul of a sinner has to be revealed by God, 
and can never be revealed by ^^ law." Our task is becoming 
easier, for this is but a repetition of another sentence (i : 17, 
see comments). "Manifested;" equivalent to " revealed'' as 
above (i : 17). "The law and the prophets." Here, at 
length, our idea is caught up. " The law " (not anarthrous) 
includes the gospel. "Borne witness to by." The gospel 
{scripturcE omnes) cannot save, but it can bear witness to itself, 
and becomes the instrument of saving by '■^ the power of God'* 
(i : 16). "But" (v. 22). We must not neglect the 6k, 
" The righteousness of God" is very little " manifested" even 
to (eif) the very most eminent saints. Therefore Paul 
qualifies, and interposes " but" and repeats a part of his 
sentence. " The righteousness of God (is) manifested" and that 
is our inward light ; ^^ but" it is alas ! a faint manifestation. 
It is " the righteousness of God " (and how well this one of 
the ten cases (i : 17) agrees with " moral excellence " .^) through 
that weak thing, "faith." And the manifestation is not made 
\zK vouov, though, indeed, it takes "the law" in its most 
extensive sense to preach and teach it; but it is made " through 
faith in Jesus Christ ; " and it is made to whom ? not to 
" all" which was the point of the apostle's question (v. 9), but 
"to all them that believe." And here Paul repeats his 



114 ROMANS. 

'' pre-occasion'' (vs. 9-18),— "for there is no difiference." 

But still he has not quite answered. " To all that believe V 
Yes ; but that is the very question. " To all that believed 
Yes ; but what makes them " believe ? " " What advantage 
hath the Jew ? " Why, that many believed (v. 2). But this 
question has come since : — Why do we not all win for our- 
selves the blessing ? (v. 9). The gist of the rejoinder, there- 
fore, is in the Greek that follows, — " Being made righteous 
as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is 
in Christ Jesus." " Freely " (E. V. & Re.) might have other 
meanings than dupedv, which means simply after the 
manner of sl Sojpov (^^ gift ") . Here then is an unbounded 
answer. " IVhy do we not all get forward? " (v. 9). For 
a most obvious account. " Getting forward is a gift." " What 
the law " (with the gospel in it, vs. 21, 22) " could not do, in 
that it was weak through the flesh," God chose to do ; and He 
does it under fixed rules. And He does it not wilfully (9 : 16), 
or sovereignly (9 : 15), or, as the last teleology of the case, to 
display his glory (see com. on C. 9), but He does it ex neces- 
sitate rei^ from the fiat of what is right ; and He does it, not 
according to the geography of the law, but hither and thither 
as He may, for both ''Jews and Greeks." "For all have 
sinned." That is the condition-precedent of which He has 
already spoken (v. 9). All start equally there. 'And are 
short." All sin is a deficiency. The command is. Thou 
shalt love God, and. Thou shalt love thy neighbor. Even 
devils have the obscure remainders of these affections. But 
they are to be perfect. We are to love God with all our 
powers, and our neighbor as ourselves. He that is " shoi^t " 
by nature is an apostate. Now " the glory of God," or, as 
the Hebrew meant. His weight or His excellency^ is the norm 
of all our righteousness. Conversion consists in revealing this 
excellency to us inwardly by the Spirit (i : 17). But perfectly 
it is never revealed in this world. " In glory," as we call it, 
" we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." But 
here there is an ivSzL^iq (showing) of " God's righteousness,'' 
that is, His moral excellence (see the next two verses), and 



CHAPTER III. 115 

that, along with its recognition of the Redeemer, is called 
^^ faith J " but the whole is very imperfect. All men in this 
world are still sinning, " an^ are short of the glory " (that is the 
full holiness) ^^ of God j'' ^^ being made righteous,'' that is 
incipiently or germinally so, ^' as a gift by His grace through 
the redemption which is in Christ Jesus." '•'' Redemption.'' No 
word has been emasculated more than this by the labors of 
our Protestant Reformers. Fifteen hundred years made it the 
great feature of the gospel ; rightfully so ; for the Bible makes 
it the whole of our forensic safety. Augustine knew no other ; 
nor Chrysostom, nor Bernard, nor Anselm, nor the whole host 
of ante-Lutheran theologers. This is a marvel of fact, that 
fifteen centuries should have read the Bible with precision in a 
certain way, and then that a German monk should suddenly 
change it, and the world be so little sensitive to the change 
that had been made. Before, " redemption " was every thing ; 
and articulately just here, let it be said what " redemption " was. 
Men had sinned. The curse of sin is death. Death means 
incurable sinfulness. There are added ideas of torment ; but 
those are consequential and administrative. The head curse 
is continued sinfulness. The devils, falling into the same 
estate, realize the incurable malignity. But, for reasons of 
which we are utterly unaware, man may have a better destiny. 
It is provided by an incarnate Redeemer. That is, God chose 
to unite Himself with a creature, the man Christ Jesus, and 
bargained with the man, " compassed with infirmity " and 
bloody with temptation (Lu. 22 : 44 ; Heb. 12 : 4), that if, as 
Adam was to have done, He, the second Adam, would fight 
the battle for His race, and do what Adam failed to do, that is, 
never sin. His torment in the doing (being undeserved by Him) 
should be imputed to His race, and should stand for their 
deservings ; provided, however, that in this world, and as a 
fresh probation, they should turn from their evil ways, and by 
earnest seeking to their Maker in reliance (more or less 
distinct) upon this ransom work, they should accept the offer 
made in the gospel. This is ^^ redemption." It has many 
strange concomitants. It is slow and tardy, and may not 



ii6 ROMANS. 

reach a man for eighty years. Though provided for all our 
race, it misses miUions. Though provided for all our time, 
it arrives tardily. Though provided for all our sins, it 
extinguishes them slowly. And though provided for all our 
pains, we breathe our first breath in pain, and breathe our last 
often in horrible anguish. But what does this matter ? It is 
as it is ; and we learn what it is, fact by fact, as we survey the 
gospel. '■^Redemptions'' therefore, strictly and in every sense 
it certainly is not. The Redeemer did not pay what we would 
have to pay ; only, being God, He paid enough. He did not 
pay for one set of men exactly with the good results with which 
He paid for others. He damned some men more desperately. 
Therefore it was not a redemption at all in any thing like an 
ordinary sense, and an attempt to make it so has bred the 
doctrine of a definite atonement^ and other figments that have 
scandalized the church. It was not any one thing of human 
boundaries. It was not a " sacrifice " in any such sense as that 
God was resentful. God has no such trait. He has but two 
moralities, a love for the ^Ikti {rightly and benevolence for 
His creatures. Mediaeval theology, in its worst shape, was 
uppermost when men dreamed of Vindicatory Justice as by 
the side of Benevolence. The severities of Hell are real, and 
vindicatory justice exists, and is just as terrible as they have 
said ; but it is not what they have said. It is the fruit of 
higher moralities ; and God's love of holiness is the adorable 
fountain from which have originated all the divine administra- 
tions. Men err, therefore, when ^^ propitiation^' or ^'- expiation^'* 
or " atonement^' or " substitution^' or " ransom " are pushed 
beyond the intention of the apostles. The very multiplication 
of the terms shows the labor of the inspired to let in side 
lights. And, therefore, when men proceed to extremities, 
and represent God as angry in such a sense as to need placa- 
tion, when the very plan is from Him ; or the Son as pleased 
in such a sense as to be in a fit frame to placate and soothe 
the Father, when He is the very begotten of the Father, men 
ruin every thing. " Redemption " is a great plan, which we can 
but little fathom ; the sure feature of which is that it is 



CHAPTER III. 117 

necessary J which has wholesome elucidations in these names 
for it by the apostles ; but which, like the Fall, is beyond 
reason ; and is best described by Christ where He says, " It 
behoved Christ to suffer" (Me^, Luke 24 : 46). That is 
the wisest word yet. It was necessary ; why, we shall never 
know. It was the directly essential thing, for some cause that 
we must leave to God, " for eternal salvation to all them that 
obey Him " (Heb. 5:9). 

But, now, we mortals, having that which the devils never 
had, what is the result ? Why, the cure of our sinfulness. 
We are constantly laying emphasis on hell-torment. If we are 
pardoned, what does pardon amount to ? Would it be anything 
if it left the head-curse ? This was what rung in the brains of 
the earlier Christianity. What is the great curse ? Sin. 
What is the great grace? Ransom. What is the fruit of 
ransom ? Pardon. What must be the effect of pardon ? 
Heaven, indeed ; but, as the great foretaste of heaven, a 
diminution of our sinfulness. This, in their different poses, is 
conversion, regeneration, cleansing, a new creation, or what- 
ever you choose to call a betterment of character. Now, the 
Reformers stripped *' redemption " of a part of its effect, and 
carried it over to a new conception. If I am pardoned, what 
do I need more ? If I am pardoned, Tophet will be shut, but, 
as the more exalted part of the effect, sin will be diminished. 
What is the diminution of my sinfulness but a creation of 
righteousness ? It is not really righteousness, for it continues 
sinful ; but it is called righteousness so as to avoid telling the 
story over again. Luther would agree in that, for " holy 
brethren " (Heb. 3:1) certainly did not mean holy brethren. 
Now, continue pardoning me, and continue sanctifying me, 
and what do I need more ? What do I need of Christ's 
righteousness? Christ's righteousness made my ransom 
perfect, because it left Him innocent, and handed over to me 
His otherwise unjust sufferings. But what do I need further ? 
Luther dishonored our redemption when he tore from it its 
plenary results, and built up another story to the work, 
namely, the transfer to us of another's righteousness. Let us 



ii8 ROMANS. 

not be misunderstood. We build everything upon Christ. 
We emphasize to the very iast that " without the shedding of 
blood there is no remission." ^ut we emphasize the doctrine 
further, that with the shedding of blood there may be every 
remission ; and that remission would be a farce if it did not 
take away our sinfulness ; and that if it takes away our 
sinfulness, that means that it " makes (us) righteous j " and that 
if it " makes (us) righteous^'' we do not need the righteousness 
of Christ, except to lean on as giving His sufferings free, and 
to pattern after as our Great Redeemer. The vfholQ justifying 
idea as taught in modern times has lessened the morality of 
the people. It is true we build upon Christ as much as // does, 
and make as entire the helplessness of the sinner ; but, blotting 
out a whole round of texts that mean that / am to be righteous, 
and lessening by that number the appeals for my own personal 
purification, cannot but act disastrously ; and hence the 
exceeding importance of just such a text as this : — " Being 
made righteous as a gift by His grace " — infinitely not by a 
borrowed or transmitted righteousness : I do not need that if 
I am forgiven ; but, as the fruit of my forgiveness, a righteous- 
ness of my own ; that is, what the devils are denied, an 
incipient cure within ; very imperfect, but yet dignified (as all 
admit in some texts) by the name of " righteousness " (2 Cor. 
9 : 10), and, in the sinner's case, wholly of ^^ grace,'' and as the 
fruit in its very highest attainments of the Great Redemption. 

25. Whom God proposed to Himself as a propitiation 
through faith in His blood, to show His righteousness on 
account of the passing over of the sins that had been 
previously committed in the forbearance of G-od; 26. More 
immediately to show His righteousness in the present 
time, that He might be righteous, and yet make righteous 
him who is so out of faith in Jesus. 

"Proposed to Himself." There has been a strange dis- 
position to translate this, '■^ set forth'' (E. V. & Re.), or by 
some equivalent expression. The verb is middle, and means 
most radically to set before one's self, and, hence, to propose. 
Such is its meaning in classical authors. In the New 



CHAPTER III. 119 

Testament it occurs twice elsewhere, and in each instance in 
this sense. " I purposed to come unto you " (E. V., Rom. i : 13). 
Again, Paul being still the speaker, " Having made known 
unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good 
pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself " (E. V., Eph. i : 9). 
Paul, therefore, uses the verb three times ; and he uses the 
noun seven times, in fact only six, if we exclude the Hebrews, 
and the latter number is half of all the instances in the New 
Testament Scriptures. Of the remaining six, four relate to the 
shew-bread, '' the loaves Trpodeaeog, of the setting out " (Matt., 
Mr., Lu.), or, in the Hebrews, " the setting forth of loaves " 
(Heb. 9: 2). The two others are just what we speak of, viz., 
a purpose, " with purpose of heart " (E. V., Acts 11 : 23), and, 
in the same book, " they had obtained their purpose " (E. V., 
Acts 27 : 13). And then the six instances, which are certainly 
of Paul, are these : — " According to His purpose " (E. V., 
Rom. 8 : 28). '' The purpose of God " (E. V., Rom. 9 : 11). 
" According to the purpose," and ^' according to the eternal 
purpose " (E. V., Eph. i : 11 & 3 : 11). " According to His 
own purpose " (E. V. 2 Tim. i : 9). " Doctrine, manner of life, 
purpose " (E. V., 2 Tim. 3 : 10). The arrangement, therefore, 
of which He is about to speak is a matter of God's purpose^ 
however important the setting forth idea may be before the 
close of the sentence, "Propitiation." The word is from 
an adjective i(ikao^ that means 7nild or clement. Our word 
hilarity traces to it. The idea is a very simple one, and means 
any certain something that makes cle77ie7it^ or secures ^'■pro- 
pitiation.'' "By faith in His blood." The Revisionists, 
catching the feeling that '^propitiation " cannot be " through " 
(Re.) "/<2/V^," have attacked the punctuation. Their idea is 
that ^'■propitiation " is gloriously sufficient ; that '^ faith," as 
added to it, is utterly unscriptural, and so it is. " Propitiation " 
is a clean work by itself, and ^^ faith " is only necessary to it 
to secure its benefits. In fact "/^//^," in itself considered, is 
the very "substance" (Heb. 11 : i) of its benefit. They, 
therefore, point in this fashion : — " Whom God set forth to be 
a propitiation, through faith, by His blood." 



I20 ROMANS. 

Now, the difficulties of all this are, first, that it remedies 
nothing. Making '■^ faith " parenthetical does not remove it 
sufficiently. What is it still but " propitiation through faith ? " 
Second, why did not Paul attend to the matter ? A Greek 
clear of the mistake could be constructed easier than by 
parenthesis. Third, how better than just this way could a 
meaning be constructed which we are about to dilate upon ? 
Am, as we have seen (i : ii ; 2 : 27), has the sense of 
accompaniment. " This is He who came by water and blood." 
'' Neglect not the gift that is in thee that was given thee by 
prophecy " (i Tim. 4 : 14). " Who by the letter and circumcis- 
ion "etc. (2 : 27). "By Him were all things created" (Col. i : 16). 
This like beth essentice (Prov. 3 : 26) is a peculiarity that we 
neglect at our peril. The idea is of necessary accompaniment. 
As God " created all things by Jesus Christ " (Eph. 3 : 9) in 
the sense that all was naught without Him as an accom- 
paniment, so He ^'- proposed to Himself a propitiation" with this 
inexorable link, that all was naught without faith ; that just 
as the universe required Christ, or Christ's errand required 
blood (Heb. 9 : 12), so this "propitiation," in its turn, should 
require faith as its necessary accompaniment*' and that, too, the 
"faith in (the) blood'' of the exacted sacrifice. '■^Pro- 
pitiation^' therefore, is a desirable word except in certain par- 
ticulars, first, that it does not make clement except where it has 
given ^^ faith," and, second, that it does not make clement at all 
in the sense of God's personal estate, in as much as He was 
previously clement in the very act of proposing to Hi^nself the 
blessed gospel. " Blood" I need hardly say, means all suffering 
from the manger to the ascension into heaven. 

We come next to the special uses of the passage in carrying 
out Paul's projet from the beginning : — " I am ready to preach 
the gospel to them that are in Rome also" (Rom. i : 15). 
And he described what the gospel was. It was " the power of 
God unto salvation to every one that believeth." And he gave 
the general reason, " Because therein the righteousness of God 
is revealed," and revealed to " faith," and revealed in so inter- 
nal and moral a way that men " live " thereby [ib. v. 17), that 



CHAPTER III, 121 

is, seeing this noble exemplar of " righteousness," they become 
" righteous," and " righteous " inchoately in the shape of 
<* faith," fulfilling a quotation of the apostle taken from Hab- 
bakuk, " The righteous by faith shall live." 

Now, having taken the gospel to pieces, he takes each part 
of it and explains how showing it (as, for example, in this 
instance, the ''''propitiation'' feature) is a showing of ''''the 
righteousness of God.'' And when the showing j^s evde^f ^f , an 
inward showing, it amounts to inward '■'■faith." What God 
^poideTo He had to propose for Himself in order to satisfy 
justice ; but, having proposed it to Himself as what I5u, that 
is, was the thing required. He expounds it to His people ; and 
uses what was a necessity in court, as a necessity a second 
time for the moral illumination of the sinner. '■'■ Whom God 
proposed to Himself as a propitiation by faith in His bloody 
to show His righteousness.'* The word is ivdu^iq which 
always means an inward showing. It is never applied to out- 
ward objects, but always to inward ; that is, in the few cases in 
which it occurs, it means to show " wrath " (9 : 22), or to show 
"power" {ib. : 17), or "the work of the law" (2 : 15), or 
*' faith " (Ti. 2 : 10), or " meekness " (Ti. 3 : 2), or "diligence " 
(Heb. 6 : 11), or "boasting" (2 Cor. 8 : 24), or "many evil 
things" (2 Tim. 4 : 14), with such a result upon the inward 
eye as the necessities of the passage would lead us to 
imagine.* Now, Paul shows a lesser and a deeper showing ; 
and he also states an earlier and a more immediate end. " To 
show His righteousness ;" now, in what particular? First in 
the lesser particular of "passing over sins previously com- 
mitted." This had been a scandal in the universe. The "/r<?- 
pitiation" explained how God could slumber so when men were 
cursing Him. This was the earlier exigence, and is expressed 
by UQ ; and then comes the more immediate purpose 
(Trpof, a particle more urgent than elf ), *' to show His 
righteousness in the present time, that He might be 

* When Alexander, the coppersmith, " showed (Paul) many evil things," 
of course it did not sanctify Paul in the way that it did to show him the 
righteousness of Christ. The result must be in the thing shown. 



122 ROMANS. 

righteous and yet make righteous him who is so out of 
faith in Jesus." Paul, as his custom is, carries everything; 
along in the torrent of his speech. He drags after him in one 
breath two unspeakable sequences, one that God may be able 
to do a certain things and the other that He may have actual 
subjects to do it on. The failure to disentangle these has 
caused some of the embarrassments about the word Trpoedero. 
God TTpoedero, that is ^''proposed to Himself^'' the llaoTTjptovy 
to make it possible to remove the sinfulness of men. It was 
*' the requisite for eternal salvation." But then, as it was. 
bound inexorably to ^^ faith,'' He must have His way of pro- 
ducing '^ faith y and He chose most practically to do it by 
showing this very '■^propitiation ;'' that is by showing inwardly 
and savingly, and in the shape of ^^ faith,'' and in such a shape 
of " faith " as shall be through moral light and itself a 
righteousness, the righteousness of God," as gloriously exhibited 
in a plan by which always sin could wait for its punishment 
upon the operations of the gospel, and by which now sin can 
be forgiven, and God make better men those "who (are) 
so by faith in Jesus." " Him who is so " is not vital to the- 
meaning, but it makes it plainer ; and the warrant for such 
filling out of texts can be found in many a sentence (5 : 12 ; 
16 : 27 ; I Cor. 2 : 9 ; 2 Cor. 4 : 6 ; see Winer, Am. Ed.,. 
p. 168). 

Two inferences remain, first, that "boasting" is out 
of place, and second, that there is no " G-od of Jews," 
except in the aspects stated (v. 2), who is not the God of all 
nations ; and that, by throwing over board the Israelitish 
claims, there is nothing really taken from "the law," but 
much confirmed. 

27. Where is the boasting then? It was shut out. By 
what sort of law ? Of the works ? Nay, but by a law 
of faith. 28. We reckon, therefore, that a man is made 
righteous in the shape of faith aside from works of law. 
29. Or is He the God of Jews only? Is He not also of 
Gentiles? 30. Aye, of Gentiles also. If indeed God is 
one, being such a one as out of faith will make righteous, 
the circumcision, and by means of faith the uncircum- 



CHAPTER III. 123 

cision. ai. Do we then bring law to nothing by faith? 
By no means. On the contrary we set up law. 

" The boasting." That which Paul has been arguing down 
in other passages (2 : 17 etc.). "It was shut out:" that is 
(aorist) a longtime ago, through all dispensations. "By what 
sort of law?" The Jews, in '^boasting'' of law (2 : 17), of 
course appealed to it. Now, " what sort of law " justified 
boasting? Not even a law "of works," especially of ^^ the 
works " such as the Jews themselves professed, which were 
full of sacrificial gospel. But eminently not another sort of 
law. A second covenant added to the first ; that is a new 
'^law " added to the old, and was strictly "a law of faith;" 
which new law not simply demanded ^^ faith,'' for that the old 
law did, but afforded grace for its bestowal, and more than 
ever, therefore, "shut" boasting ^^ out^' (" excluded" it, E.V.) ; 
for by the very nature of the ^^ faith " Abraham, as we after- 
wards learn, could not boast " before God" (4 : 2). 

"Made righteous in the shape of faith." ''By faith'* 
(E. V. & Re.) is a most injurious English. It appears in all 
our translations. Sometimes " through " is substituted for it ; 
rarely anything else. It is a key point in all our theologies, 
and this is a good moment thoroughly to discuss it. The 
preposition "by " (E. V. & Re.) is made to express in English 
four conditions of the Greek — either, first, of this where there 
is no preposition at all, but simply the dative case ; or, as 
occasion comes, of that where there is either of three pre- 
positions, ZK, did and h. This general rendering by " by " is 
often mourned over, and men are ready to complain of the 
poverty of the English ; indeed, with all his nice distinctions, 
Paul is not only stripped of them in our tongue, but, alas, for 
his main point ! has it completely blurred, and, in fact, 
altered, in the hands of the Reformed. Justification " by faith " 
has been a different thing since the days of Luther. In a way 
that impaired redemption (see com. v. 24), the doctrine that 
Christ's sufferings were imputed to us has been added to by 
the idea that so was also His righteousness. A^/caidw, to 
justify (E. V. & Re.), has, therefore, received the meaning of 



124 ROMANS. 

this transfer. No earthly writing uses it in a kindred sense. 
I justify myself, but I pretend that I deserve it. I justify 
God, but I know that He deserves it. I justify the wicked, but 
I lie in doing so, for I make pretend his innocence. If I 
translate 6LKaL6td of a transference of righteousness, I do 
that which has no warrant in any human language. If it 
became necessary to coin a sense, we would not object ; but 
that is not the outgiving. The pretension is that justify 
naturally translates 6iKaL6u) in the sense of imputed righteous- 
ness. We have already shown that 6LKaL6io means to make 
righteous (2 : 13). We have traced it to its root in d'lKrjy and 
we have further shown that, as that word means the actual 
right, so the verb means actually to make righteous, only with 
the same reserve with which to make clean or to make holy are 
used for incipient believers. This being so, faith, in the Greek, 
unfolds an easy teaching. Paul means differently by all his 
prepositions. When he says, '-''Made righteous by faith,'' he 
means, that when a man, driven by terror, cries out to God, 
and in the light of his boyhood's faith appeals to Christ for his 
deliverance, and God, as He has promised, hears him and 
regenerates his spirit, the light in which that new birth consists, 
enters his " faith " as it enters his love, and as it enters all his 
repentance, and it becomes saving " faith," and therein, just 
there, it is his essential righteousness. A man, therefore, is 
not justified by faith in the sense of having Christ's righteous- 
ness transferred to him on the condition of trusting Him, but 
he is made righteous by means of faith (choosing now the word 
610), when his common '•'■ faith " is touched by the Spirit 
and becomes coeval with repentance, and becomes a fruit of 
regeneration, and hence moral in its nature, and hence an 
actual righteousness in its germ and earnest. All the sense 
of 6ia is not exhausted by the idea that ^^ faith " is the 
righteousness. It is a means as well. That is, it is that grace 
which has the further promise of life and help if we continue 
in the seeking. And now, ^^ made righteous out of [ek) faith" 
{5 : 1) : What is that ? It is a stronger expression, that 
^^ faith " is of the very essence of the righteousness. " In " 



CHAPTER III. 125 

(ev , Gal. 2 : 20) is still stronger. But then, coming close 
to my text, the dative {t:lctu or r?? -klctel) is strongest of all. 
It really places '•'• faith " in apposition to righteousness. It is 
*• the dative of material " (see Jelf, Ox. Ed., § 610). It means 
" righteous in the shape (or form) of faith," and so we have 
translated it ; and it has oceans of precedent in this same 
apostle. 

Let us dwell upon this a little. (Where is there anything 
more vital ?) In the very call of this apostle we have this 
language, '' Sanctified by faith (E. V,, Tr/arei ) that is in 
me" (Acts 26 : 18). "Sanctified," it will be noticed; not 
justified ; destroying Luther's right to separate justification 
from other subjective words ; and " sanctified " in the shape of 
faith (dative)^ plainly meaning that the sanctification con- 
sisted in the faith. " The hand-writing " consisted in the 
" ordinances " (dative) beyond a doubt, as Paul wrote to the 
Colossians (2 : 14). Abraham was " weak in faith" (dative), 
or "made strong in faith " (dative), when his weakness or his 
strength equally consisted in his faith, I mean as weak or 
strong (4 : 19, 20). Standing by faith (2 Cor. i : 24), abounding 
in faith (2 Cor. 8 : "j^^ purifying by faith (Acts 15 : 9), all datives, 
mean that the standing or the abounding or the making pure 
were all essentially the faith ; that is, that they consisted in it. 
The genitive is used with like effect where it speaks of " the 
righteousness of faith" (4 : 11). What is that but faith? 
And kv (in) often amounts to the same ; as for example, 
" salvation in sanctification of spirit, and faith in truth " 
(2 Thess. 2 : 13) ; indeed a double example ; for if salvation 
consists in sanctification, why not also essentially and subjec- 
tively (as here in the same category) in " faith in the truth " ? 
"We reckon, therefore, that a man is made 7'ighteous'' by 
being made to believe graciously and as a gift, the ^^ faith " 
being itself moral like all the other graces of the Spirit, the 
''faith " becoming, therefore, itself his righteousness ; "aside 
from works of law," because "law " cannot produce such 
" works," simply from being thundered at us ; any more than 
"body" can (7 : 24 ; 8 : 13), or "flesh" can (8 : 3), or 



126 . ROMANS. 

"darkness" can (13 : 12), or even Christ can (Jo. 5 : 30), 
without His Godhead achieving it for Him (Jo. 14 : 10). 

To suppose that, as a gospel for the Jews, He should deny 
its freeness, and plan to save them in trampling the gospel, 
would be audacious. " Is He God of Jews only ? " 
Appeals so plain as to be nil logically, are warm in the 
hands of Paul. "If indeed God is one." Why, of 
course He is one. Well, then, "being such a one as" (see 
the force of 6f, Jelf, also Winer, Am. Ed., p. 168, and com- 
ment., 5 : 26 ; also com. 5:12) has made a rule, and a very 
gracious one, that is, to " make circumcision righteous out 
of faith, and uncircumcision by means of faith," how 
possibly can circumcision either glory or complain ? The 
sentence is strangely keen. If you are the genuine " circum- 
cision," and of a line with Abraham, then, of course, you believe, 
and " out of faith " (notice the preposition Ik ) God is making 
you righteous. If you are not the " circumcision,'' but either 
^'^ by nature" (2 : 27), or sin (2 : 9), are become ^'■uncircum- 
cision " (2 : 25), God " by means of faith " v/ill yet " tnake " you 
^^ righteous ; " that is will answer your prayer, and give you 
graciously the holiness that is in believing. '' Z>o we then 
make void the law by faith " (E. V.) ? "By no means." It is to 
re-establish the law. " For what the law could not do in that 
it was weak through the flesh ; " that is, what the old cove- 
nant could not do simply by promise and gospel speech, God 
did. He wrote the law on the heart, and gave the gospel an 
imprint upon the sinner. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Paul, having prepared the way, for the first time introduces 
Abraham. It is a master stroke. The Jews trusted to 
Abraham. One drop of Abraham's blood, with circumcision, 
was crown and castle. If Paul illustrated by Israel (9 : 6), he 



CHAPTER IV. 127 

must include the Patriarch. This he does signally in the 
present chapter. There are divers differences in the MSS. ; 
none of them very vital. We choose by the usual criteria of 
claim, but without comment : — 

1. What shall we therefore say that Abraham, our first 
father, found through flesh ? 

Paul reaches the very core of the Jew's prejudice. He does 
not attack what the Jew could find from "Abraham," but, 
infinitely worse, what " Abraham " could find for himself. His 
catapult is flat against the citadel. "Therefore," if we are 
to " set up law " (3 : 31), then " Abraham ! " What are we to 
say of him? "■ Accordi7ig to'' (E. V. & Re.). We translate 
''through" as more English, and for other reasons detailed 
in a previous case (i : 3, 4). This expression, "through 
flesh," is a key to the whole epistle. It means that through 
the flesh a man cannot be '* made righteous'' 

This is the omnivocal truth. '■^ By works of law shall 
no flesh be inade righteous." Why ? Because by the heralding 
of the gospel (to take the '' law " at the very strongest) no 
mortal man can be converted. He needs something more, viz., 
the inward application of ^' law," thus thundered forth. 
" Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ " is uttered to that which is 
dead. Paul explains this, " For what the law could not do, in 
that it was weak through "the flesh, God, etc., etc." (8:3); 
and still more extensively just afterward. The apostle 
expounds the apostle. What " accordifig to the flesh " (E. V.) 
did he find ? Why, nothing. " They that are after the flesh 
do mind the things of the flesh ; but they that are after the 
Spirit, the things of the Spirit ; for the minding of the flesh 
(marg.) is death, but the minding of the Spirit {inarg.^ is life 
and peace ; because the minding of the flesh [marg.) is enmity 
against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither 
indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please 
God." There is no mystery in this thing. '' Works of law " 
are " works of flesh ; " that is, if the law which is to produce 
them in the soul has nothing to depend upon but to herald out 



128 ROMANS. 

its commands to our trdpf {''flesh "), when stronger than our 
nvevua (''spirit"). For though our "spirit" is the abode 
of God's Spirit, yet He must increase its Hght before it is 
moved savingly by " law " or gospel. This makes the passage 
very complete. 

2. For if Abraham was made righteous by works, he 
has whereof to boast, but not toward God by what the 
Scripture says ; 3. But Abraham believed God, and it was 
reckoned to him as righteousness. 

" For." There follow a series of arguments to show that 
" Abraham through the flesh found'' nothing. 

" Works." He uses this expression as a word by itself for 
the first time. And we see, he falters. " Works of law " 
(3 : 20 etc.), — that can be positive. " Works'' that "-law" can 
produce by the mere ypdyiiia or heralding — that we can 
dispose of brusquely. But " works ! " — that will answer for 
terseness, but must be understood with vast explanation. And, 
therefore, before Paul launches himself upon that free use, he 
takes care that he be understood. "Was made righteous by 
works." He does not say " were" (E. V.). He discards the 
subjunctive altogether. Nor does he say ''would have " {sub- 
junctive with hv) ; but he says "hath" (E. V. & Re.), whereby 
we understand that Abraham "was made righteous by works" 
and did have KavxnfJ-f^^ or "whereof to boast." Nor need we 
be uneasy for the gospel ; for Paul says that thing over and 
again. He says, " A man is not made righteous by works of 
law, except hy faith in Jesus Christ " (Gal. 2 : 16). And now 
for our general comment : To say that " a man is not made 
righteous by works " would be very much like saying that he is 
not made bad by sin, or made fat by bodily substance. The 
folly of this guards Paul's tersenesses of rhetoric. He has said 
" works of law " till the thing could be understood, and has ex- 
plained himself in so many ways as to venture now the more terse 
expression. Think of men who sang, " Oh, how love I Thy 
law!" being taught that by "works" no man was "made 
righteous" ! And, therefore, Paul had explained himself all 
the way alocig. " The work of law" even, would save a man 



CHAPTER IV. 129 

under certain gospel circumstances (Gal. 2 : 16). " The doers 
of law" would alone "be made righteous" (2 : 13). They 
were to be judged " every man according to his works " 
(Rev. 20 : 12). And John was not more earnest that *' he 
that doeth righteousness is righteous" (i Jo. 3 : 7), or Christ 
that men must do these sayings of His (Matt. 7 : 24, etc.), or 
James that we must be "doers of the work" (Jas. i : 25), 
than Paul, that it must be " by patient continuance in well- 
doing" that we are to " seek glory, and honor, and immortality, 
eternal life" (2 : 7). That it is not ^^ works,'' therefore, 
that make us righteous is absurd. They actually grade all the 
extent in which we are ^'righteous " (Rev. 20 : 13). But that 
we are " 7?iade righteous " in this world in any but the very 
incomplete sense of being less sinful, or that we are " made 
righteous " ever in the sense of satisfying for the sins of life, 
or that we are " made righteous " (now, as the chief point) by 
starting out to be so in the strength of " the flesh,'' and under 
thunders from " the law," are equally impossible, and Paul 
aims to teach that we have been redeemed by the sufferings of 
Christ, and had bought for us (as the devils never had) the 
influences of the Spirit, — that we may seek and find ; and that 
we .may have in this dawning ^^ faith " the beginnings of a 
righteousness. 

" If," therefore, " Abraham was made righteous by works," 
as, of course, he was, for who by the possibilities of ethics can 
be made righteous in any other form ? " he has whereof to 
boast," and Paul, when men were concerned, did much of this 
rightful boasting. He cries, " I have fought a good fight " 
(2 Tim. 4 : 7). He declares, " I labored more than they all" 
(i Cor. 15 : 10). He boasts, "I am not behind the chiefest of 
the apostles " (i Cor. 15 : 10). He uses this very word 
(Kavxv<yiv), " that whereof I may boast through Jesus 
Christ" (Rom. 15 : 17). And, if he had hesitated, he need 
but turn back to an older date ; for the saddest of the prophets 
cries out, " Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man boast 
(LXX, Kavxdadco) in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man 
boast in his might ; let not the rich man boast in his riches, 



I30 ROMANS. 

but let him that boasts boast in this, that he understands and 
knows me, that I am the Lord who exercise loving-kindness, 
judgment and righteousness in the earth " (Jer. 9 : 23, 24). 
If, therefore, *' Abraham was made righteous by works " (as 
indeed all must be in the more natural and usual sense), " he 
has whereof to boast'' (Neh. 13 : 14), for he greatly excelled in 
righteousness (Heb. 11 : 17) those about him; "but not 
toward God" by any warrant that the Scriptures give. 
^^ But" (v. 3). This word (6e) is not in the Septuagint. 
The Seventy have kuI {^^ a7id"). But 6e also appears in the 
Epistle of James (Jas. 2 : 23). We cannot explain it there. 
But here it has seemed to be connected with the particular 
shape of the clause preceding. That clause scarce answers to 
the English, " For what saith the Scripture ?" (E, V. & Re,), 
because the ij ■ypa<i)?) is before the Uyei (see 11:2, Gal. 4 : 30), 
and such things, under so careful a pen as Paul's, should be 
carefully noted. Ti (" what") as W indirect (see Matt. 10 : 19) 
would give greater room for " but" or, even if we had to dis- 
card it as interrogative (as perhaps we ought to do in certain 
other Scriptures), it is better to imagine moderns to be false 
in the accent, than Paul himself as not careful of the order of 
his speech, rdp often tinctures with this sort of soup^on of a 
reason ; and the meaning of the apostle might naturally be, 
*' not toward God by " (meaning /<?r the reason of) " what " (or 
^'anything that") ^' the Scripture says," ^^ but" (giving free 
room to introduce the 6e before the actual quotation) : — " but 
* Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteous- 
ness! " It is possible, however, that all this is unnecessary, 
and that there was a reading of 6k in LXX MSS. (see Meyer). 
There is neither mt nor 6k however in the Epistle to the 
Galatians (3 : 6). 

Thus then is introduced a sentence that seems to have had 
a broad horizon in the mind of the apostle. Of all other texts 
in the Bible it ought not to be considered as rendering less 
subjective — "righteousness." '■'■^y faith" — and here let it 
be noted that that dative all through the most marvellous 
chapter in the Hebrews (n) is without the preposition, and 



CHAPTER IV. 131 

therefore, means that essential " substance " (see first verse) 
of piety which each case quoted brings into view {see com. 3 130) — 
" By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac " 
(Heb. II : 17). All our study of Abraham should convince 
us that his faith was new-bred holiness, as imbuing and charac- 
terizing, just as it might love or alms-giving, the pious act by 
which he trusted the Almighty. All holiness expresses itself 
in exercise ; and if seeking and trusting are just that exercise 
which God commands to the sinner, it is perfectly just to say 
that when he obeys the command out of holiness, just as he 
would that of love or alms-giving, it becomes saving, and it 
becomes the method of more and more holiness ; and who can 
profess, then, not to understand how " Abraham believed God, 
and it was reckoned to him as righteousness ? " 

It will be noticed that we scarce quote from James. James 
has strong texts in our English Bibles (E. V. & Re.). He is 
made to say, " By works a man is justified " (2 : 24) ; and to 
ask, " Was not Abraham our father justified by works " (v. 21) ? 
" and was not Rahab justified by works, in that (Re.) she 
received the messengers, and sent them out another way " 
(v. 25) ? This was the great Jamesian subjectivity that made 
Luther speak of a "straw epistle." But just where the 
English (E. V.) comes in to help our view of Paul, we are 
obliged to give it up. We are obliged, in honesty, to under- 
stand James differently. We understand from the order of 
the Greek that he was asserting a fact ;— " Abraham " (and in 
the like case " Rahab ") " was not made righteous by works ; " 
and in the twenty-fourth verse he was asking a question, " Do 
ye, indeed, see that a man is made righteous by works, and not 
alone by faith ? " So that James is more Pauline than Paul. 
And yet, though we know that till some day we can treat ^ 
separately of this criticism, and rob it of its improbable look, 
our repute will suffer, yet we insist upon bringing it forward. 
If it is false, the more whimsical it seems the better. If it is 
true, it will work its way. And it ought to be so evident that, 



* See Excursus at the close of the book. 



132 ROMANS. 

" Abraham — the— father — of us — not — of works — was made 
righteous,'' does not mean a question, and that no sentence like 
it can be found that does mean one, that it should win respect^ 
as the physicians say, " on the first intention." 

But though James gives away " righteousness by works" 
technically so spoken of, and joins Paul, yet he is even stronger 
than Paul in asserting the righteous essence of faith. He 
says that though " Abraham was not made righteous by 
works," so that we need abandon Paul's ground, or forget that 
works, gendered without grace, never saved any man, yet that 
faith was the intimate working principle of works ; faith was 
the intimate inner worker along with works or inside of them 
{avvTJpyEL, Jas. 2 : 22), ''and by the works was the faith 
made real {heXeMdrj).'' He insists upon the faith, and he 
insists upon it by the quotation of this same passage, " But 
Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteous- 
ness " {ib. V. 23). With this testimony of James that '' the 
faith, aside from the works, is dead " {ib. v. 20), and with the 
testimony of Paul that " faith aside from works of law makes 
(us) righteous " (3 : 28), we are fetched quite up to the neces- 
sary sense : — that (as to the getting of -'■ righteousness'' sub- 
jectively, or to our becoming less sinful) works stirred by 
preaching, or which are set out upon under the thunders of 
the law (that and nothing else), make no man righteous ; but 
that faith (which is the great commanded work, and which 
owns by its very nature* the insufficiency of the flesh) when 
it " comes by hearing" (10 : 17), and is the gift of the asked 
for efficiency of the Spirit, is itself our '* righteousness," and 
that this was what Phinehas had when " he believed God," 
and when a righteous act, full of grace, was '' reckoned to 
him as righteousness" (Ps. 106 : 31). 

4. But to him that works anything out, the pay is 
not reckoned of grace, but of debt; 5. But to him who 
does not work the thing out, but believes on Him who 
makes the ungodly righteous, his faith is reckoned as 
righteousness. 

* James has this idea. " Faith, if it have not works, is dead accoiding to 
its very self" (2 : 17). 



CHAPTER IV. 133 

To go back (3 : 24) : — " Redemption " was a total purchase, 
to which man owes as much his deUverance as though the sub- 
stitution were made twice, and man were blessed with the two- 
fold transference, first, of his guilt to Christ and, second, of 
Christ's righteousness to him as his obedience. In fighting 
against this last, and condemning it as a myth conceived by 
Luther, we are in danger all the time of being imagined to 
lessen the Redeemer. Let us be always going back : — Sin at 
the first stroke is helpless. Like a stone loosed from human 
hand, it gravitates endlessly. The tall archangel, when he 
sinned, fell into a pit literally bottomless ; and nothing can 
arrest the law as he goes on perpetually downward. It is a 
horrible idea. And there it is that our religion should have 
taken hold more of our thought. To make us righteous is 
deliverance itself. To save us torment is more, in our view, 
but less, in the eternal redemption. " How shall man become 
righteous with »God " (Job 9:2)? is the great problem of the 
gospel. It belittles this to divide the plan of mercy. We had 
a great curse. The devils sank under it. Redemption came 
to remove it. And Christ, in order to put it away, endured 
sufferings which He did not deserve, and they were imputed 
to us. Of course we ennoble everything if we consider that 
sufficient. Christ's righteousness we do not actually need if 
He has bought for us a plenary pardon. For let us look at 
that once more. If He pardon, taking His own time to the 
work, could He leave us sinful ? For that is the very curse. 
And if He leave us not sinful, but in His own gradual way 
make us righteous,* what did Luther do but emasculate that 
triumph ? for if the good God pardon me to the very last of 
my transgression, what do I further need if He gradually com- 
plete my righteousness ? 

To do this, He drives me to ^^ faith.'' That is, He makes no 
promises unless I seek Him, and He counsels me to seek Him, 

* As Augustine says, " Beginning to be justified, and to receive the power 
of doing right " (ad Simp., vol. 4, lib. i), by a " justification here imperfect 
i \ us" (vol. 5, p. 867), such that " when our hope shall be completed, then 
our justification shall be completed," (ib. p. yao). 



134 ROMANS. 

recognizing as distinctly as I can the work of my Redeemer. 
Why this is necessary I cannot distinctly say. " Now to him 
that works the pay is not reckoned of grace, but of debt." 

If I, without ^^grace," either from scorning it or knowing 
little about it, set out to be a better man, just as Satan 
might set out to lift himself from hell ; even though we differ 
from Satan and have redemption ; and even though we differ 
more than that and have the gospel, and have the law of 
it thundered from Sinai ; yet if we reject the gospel, and spurn 
the grace of it, and refuse the prayers of it, and in our strength 
undertake to obey its laws, we are neglecting the whole spirit 
of God's administration ; we are treating the thing as though 
it were to be wrought out in the way of wage and payment ; 
we are forgetting the insufficiency even of the righteousness 
of the saint ; and we are altogether losing sight of the fact 
that by believing deference to a Redeemer we have entered a 
school of grace, which does by contrast little now, but incom- 
parably much as time rolls away. 

6. Even as also David speaks of the blessedness of the 
man to whom God reckons righteousness aside from 
works ;— 

7. Blessed are they whose transgressions were put away, 
And whose sins were covered over ; 

8. Blessed is the man whose sin God will not reckon. 

The adverse criticism that, because these two latter verses 
seem forensic, therefore, the result must be, can now be easily 
answered. The effect of pardon must necessarily be holiness ; 
otherwise the pardon is nothing. And as to saying that a 
forensic pardon cannot show itself in a subjective righteous- 
ness, that would be to forget that a forensic condemnation 
does show itself in a subjective sinfulness (i : 24, 26, 28 ; 
Mar. 3 : 29, see var. lee), and that the great curse forensically 
is, to be abandoned to sin as the result of previous wrong- 
doing (Hos. 4 : 17). David, therefore, is a strong ally to Paul 
in teaching that though Abraham was righteous, and righteous 
in a very remarkable faith, and most righteous, so that he 
could glory before his fellow men, yet that he had no cause of 



CHAPTER IV. ^ 135 

boasting ^^ before God,'' because he had not earned his righteous- 
ness as a workman does his pay, but had heired it, and in a 
most imperfect state through the forgiveness of the Redeemer. 
"Reckons." This word puts before us plainly the putative 
character of our " righteousness ^ Because it is not Christ's 
righteousness, — that does not make it less necessary to show 
its putative cast. It is putative in that it is wholly sinfulness. 
Sinfulness-grown-less is the whole of a Christian's righteous- 
ness. And it is putative also in its promise, which the Bible 
strikingly puts before us where it says, " We, in the Spirit, by 
faith wait for the hope of righteousness " (Gal. 5 : 5). 
^^Righteousness'' is therefore reckoned where it really does not 
exist (v. 6), and sinfulness refuses to be reckoned where it 
does (v. 8) ; and yet the " sin " and the " righteousness " are 
both now subjective in the way that we have distinctly 
explained. 

" Put away "does not mean, solely, '■'■forgiven " (E. V. & Re.) ; 
but we do not wish to disturb the main point. The preg- 
nant use of d0i;7/zi might be a subject of separate discussion. 

9. Was this blessedness, therefore, upon the circum- 
cision, or also upon the uncircumcision ? for we say, Faith 
was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness. 10. How was 
it then reckoned ? When he was in circumcision, or uncir- 
cumcision ? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision. 

Not even in his "faith" was "Abraham" to show a 
monopoly for the circumcised ; for Paul remembers that he 
was himself uncircumcised when he achieved his faith. 

1 1 . And he received a sign in circumcision, a seal of the 
righteousness of the faith which he had when uncircum- 
cised, that he might become a father of all those who 
believe, though they be not circumcised, that the right- 
eousness might be reckoned to them ; 12. And a father of 
circumcision to those not of circumcision only, but who 
also walk in the steps of the faith of our father Abraham, 
which he had when uncircumcised. 

This is very Zwinglian. " Circumcision " was " a sign," 
therefore. Instead of being relied upon as even Reformers 
have relied upon baptism, it was but an instrument for making 



136 ROMANS. 

impressive what had been achieved already. It was a " seal ; " 
that is an impressed token of fidelity to a "faith" had before 
hand ; and a sacrament ; an occasion for an oath which was to 
bind, in case it was fulfilled, God and the believing ^^ Abraham " 
He was "a father" about as Tubal Cain was (Gen. 4 : 22). 
The devil (Jo. 8 : 44) and God (Matt. 23 : 9) and Christ 
(Is. 53 : 10) and the church (Is. 49 : 20, 21 ; Gal. 4 : 26) are 
parents in a much more intimate way. As " Jabal was the 
father of such as have cattle " (Gen. 4 : 20), so Abraham 
"of all them that believe," viz., as the great exemplar 
" of the righteousness of the faith," that is of that " by 
courtesy " or putative " righteousness " which consists of '■''faith " 
at first, till it grow unspotted (Eph. 5 : 27) in the garden of 
the Lord. " Though they be not circumcised " (c^i" aKpo^variaq). 
This is that use of dta, as meaning a necessary accom- 
paniment (see comments 1:2; 2 : 27) ; a very important and 
a very unobserved Greek usage ; and in the case of the text, 
'' Neither with {dia) the blood of goats and calves " (Heb. 
9 : 12), or of the text, "By (dm) whom also He made the 
worlds " (Heb. i : 2), decisively crucial in its elenchtic deter- 
minations. " And a father of circumcision ; " that is of the 
true '^baptism" (Gal. 3 : 27) which the ^^ uncircumcision'' may 
become (2 : 26), even if it is never '■^circumcised,'' if it "walk 
in the steps of the faith of Abraham which he had when " 
an " uncircumcised " Gentile. 

13. For not by law was the promise to Abraham, or to 
his seed, that he should be heir to a world, but by the 
righteousness of faith. 14. For if they who were of law 
were heirs, the faith has been made void, and the promise 
utterly in vain. 

"By law" would have abundant meaning if it were said 
that *' law " did not make "the promise to Abraham," for the 
^' law " made no such '■'•promised On the contrary it made an 
adversative threat. But " the righteousness of faith," that 
is, a betterness of moral behavior, taking its seed and original 
''substance" (Heb. 11 : i) in ^^ faith,'' did. ^^ Abraham,'' 
waking up in answer to his prayers to a new moral light, did 



CHAPTER IV. 137 

find in that illumination a '' promise'' oi everything. Agar 
gendered to bondage, for it simply commanded the gospel 
without imprinting it ; but the " new covenant " was altogether 
different. It inscribed the law, and this inscription inwardly, 
which is the '^ righteousness of faith " (by which is meant that 
" righteousness " which is ^^ faith ") makes " the promise'' with- 
out an if, and without the alternation of any threatening. 
This would do, therefore, if this were the only verse ; but the 
next verse creates a difference. "For if they who were of 
law were heirs." Were heirs, therefore, must be the idea ; 
not were promised heirship. *' By law," therefore, must be 
like " by uncircutncision " in the eleventh verse, which we had 
to translate ^^ though they be not circumcised." It has the 
dca of vital accompaniment." ^^ Not by law was the promise to 
Abraham " in such a sense as that because he had the ^^ law,** 
therefore he had the promise. What would be the meaning 
then of the adversative threatening ; for we are to see pre- 
sently that "the law works wrath" (v. 15)? But ^^ by a 
righteousness" that never ^' works wrath," that is, a betterment 
of his moral nature, coming to him and consisting in a gigantic 
'"''faith " — " by " that, in the sense of a vital accompaniment 
(dcd), the '^promise" did come, and that in the most splendid 
possible amplitude. " Heir to a world." " In thee and in 
thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed " 
(Gen. 22 : 17). ''God gave our father Abraham possession 
of the heavens and earth " [Tauchuma, Commentary on the 
Pentateuch). " Faith made void." What would be the sense 
of a ^^ promise " conditioned on ^^ faith," if men enjoyed it 
without the condition, and the rule were that all " who were 
of law were heirs," that is, who heard the " laiv," or who 
were of ^'- the seed" to whom God sent it? Besides, the 
'* law " had other and deeper uses, and even some contrary to 
those to which it had been put by superstition ; 

15. For the law works wrath, but where there is no law, 
there is no transgression. 

So exceedingly opposite to Phariseeism was ^^ law," that, 
instead of working life, it worked death. Each gift of '' law " 



138 ROMANS. 

implied a deeper sentence. " But." So fine is this 6e (I mean 
so delicate) that only our Revisionists retain it. The E. V. 
has ^^for." So has the Receptus : though" there is no strength 
for that varied reading. The authority is with de, and 6k 
never means ^^for." Insisting upon ^^ but," there does appear 
this adversative significance. '' Law " cannot save a man any 
more than the plea, " Thou hast taught in our streets." In 
fact the more street-teaching, the more curse upon unbelief. 
" j5///" there is one deliverance in the direction of law, if it 
could possibly be shown forth. That is, where it entirely 
keeps away, and has no trace of itself in heart or conscience^ 
as in a born idiot, who never in any arena of life has a moral 
idea, there, of course, there can be no " wrath," for there 
can be " no transgression." 

16. Wherefore it is of faith, so that it is through grace ; so 
that the promise is sure to all the seed ; not to that which 
is of the law only, but also to that which is of the faith of 
Abraham (who is a father of us all; 17. As has been 
written, A father of many nations have I made thee), in 
the eye of that God whom he believed, who gives life to 
the dead, and calls the things that are not as though they 
were. 

" It ; " that is the heirdom, or this whole effected blessing 
instead of an offered one. " Is of faith." It is promised tO' 
*= faith " under the " old covenant," and consists in ''''faith'* 
under the " new." It is in its very •' substance " (Heb. 11 : i) 
^'' faith " considered as a beginning, and is promised to 
*^ faith " in its continuance and completion. " So that it is 
through grace." First, because it is built upon a redemption. 
No such ''faith " can be bred in Satan. Second, because it is 
not really righteous. It is only an illuminated sight, making 
us less sinful. Nevertheless, thirdly, it is spoken of as right- 
eous, and rendered acceptable in the beloved (Eph. 1:6); 
and, fourth, it grows, and unless we quench it by apostasy 
(Heb. 6 : 4-6), it becomes a light shining brighter to the per- 
fect day. It is in no sense by works, except in that great 
sense that it is itself a master work. But it is of all things else 
a. ''grace." It is the grace of all graces. It is that which 



CHAPTER IV. 139 

acknowledges '^ grace " in its very act. For, beginning away 
back where it was not saving, it sougiit God ; and how can a 
lost wretch seek the Almighty without, in the name of some 
hoped-for redemption, appealing to the simplest ^^ grace" for 
a moral return to life ? " So that." Paul is speaking of what 
things are, not what they were designed to be. This must 
affect both iva and ac- It is not ^^ to the end that" (E. V. 
and Re.) or ^'^ that" {ib^ in the intentional sense, but '■'so 
that" in the way of consequence. Some men deny this as 
possible in the Greek ; but the slenderest bunch of sentences 
will settle it (Jo. 9:2; Rom. 11 : n; 5 ; 20). ^'' Faith " is not 
what it is (71 order that it might be of '^ grace j " for how could 
it be different ? But it is so with this plain result, that if it is 
a penitent and humiliated trust, and, as such, of a moral 
nature, it admits grace by its very act, and counts in every 
thing upon a forensic propitiation. " Seed." The true seed 
undoubtedly. Not that which is "by blood " (Jo. i : 13), or 
physical generation, but " that which is by the faith of Abra- 
ham, who is a father of us all." " That only which is of the 
law " (E. V. and Re.) is therefore a dreadful error ; right 
athwart all from the very beginning. That which is of the law 
was to have no chance. The position of fiovov (" o?ily ") is dex- 
terously significant. " Not only that which is of the law " (E. 
V. and Re.), would mean that while that which is of the law 
would be saved, so might something else ; but "Not that 
which is of the law only " would mean that, while multitudes 
who were " of the law " might be saved, they could not be if 
they were " of the law only" that is, if their only plea or chance 
had been that they had ''the oracles" " But just." "-But 
also " (E. V. and Re.) would throw us back upon the old mis- 
take. We would be saying that there are two classes of heirs, 
they that were of law, and they that were of faith, whereas the 
distinct meaning is that they that were of law might be saved, 
but not on that account, but that they and all others must be 
saved by being " of the faith of Abraham, who is a father of us 
all" We will not stay to consider that being " of the law " 
might alter its sense for the occasion, and that they which are 



I40 ROMANS. 

" of faith " might mean outside rn,en who had only " the faith " 
and not the " law " of Abraham. Such changes do happen 
(2 : 14 ; Gal. 2:15; Eph. 2 : .^), and are grandly important. 
But here there is no such special necessity. We should be 
straining the grammar if we ignored the place of //dwv 
(" only "), and did not observe that, by strictly marking it, we 
hold everything to the sense of the apostle. " But Just," or 
^^ but indeed,'" ox '^ but really" To say that Kai {'^ and") can 
not have such a meaning, especially after dAAa (" ^z//" "I, and 
after a former clause with, oh (xovov {^'^ not oiolj ") is a mistake. 
" Not only so, but we even (or really) glory in God " (5 : 3, 
11) occurs but a few paragraphs further on. " Not only so, but 
even they who have the first fruits 'of the Spirit, even (E. V. 
and Re.) we ourselves groan within ourselves " (Rom. 8 : 23). 
** In the eye of that God." " Faith " is among the things 
kv T(f) KpvTTTC) {^^ hiddeji J " see 2 : 29). It must stand ^^ the eye" 
of the Almighty. The parenthesis has been fixed differently. 
Some (E. V. and Re.) make the spiritual fatherhood to be that 
which confronts God {Karevavrc), or is to be judged of " in his 
eye." It makes little difference. Often a text would be under- 
stood if there were no parenthesis marked out. The sole 
criterion is ^^ faith." It is the sovereign test either for Jews or 
Gentiles. And being such a pivot for the whole, we must be 
sure of its nature as " righteousness " (v. 13), and the only out- 
side judge is the eye of the Almighty. " Who gives life to the 
dead." This eulogium just here is nobly pertinent. The old 
grazier, when he was pointed to the stars, and called upon at 
his time of life to believe that he was to be the ^^ father " of 
innumerable princes, surely had need of some such idea of 
Deity. " Against hope ; " of all other men, he was called upon 
*' to believe upon hope ; " and, therefore, just such a " God" 
must appear to this old shepherd's vision ; a God who can 
quicken the dead, and call " things that are not as though 
they were." 

18. Being a person who against hope believed hopefully, 
so as to become a father of many nations, according to that 
which had been spokoD , Thus shall thy seed be. 19. And, not 



CHAPTER IV. 141 

being weak in faith, he considered not his own body, now 
deadened (he being about a hundred years old), nor yet the 
deadening of Sarah's womb ; 20. But, as to the promise of 
Grod, he doubted not in unbelief, but was made strong in 
faith, giving glory to God, 21. And being fully persuaded 
that what He had promised He is able really to perform. 
22. Wherefore truly it was reckoned to him as righteous- 



" Being a person." 'Of has that condensed sense as 
a pronoun (see comment on 3 : 26 ; 5 : 12) that reminds us 
that if the Greek had simply meant to say ^^who " (E. V. & Re.) 
it might have employed a participial method, and not the pro- 
noun ; and therefore, in beginning a new assertion, it is well to 
give it a greater amplitude in the English. " Against." 
Ilapd rather means aside from. There being no possible 
"hope." 'Et' f/.Tfdi rather means " z//^// hope,'' and '^believed 
upon hope " would not be altogether vague ; but if we change 
it to " in Jiope,' it might be better to make it plainer by saying 
" hopefully.'' We do not believe in hope, but in God " hope- 
fully." "He that plow^s ought to plow '^ hopefully " {1 Cor. 
9 : 10, " in hope," E. Y. & Re.). " So as to." Alford insists 
that iva and elg always mean i7ite7ition, throwing to the winds 
such cases as these (Jo. 9:2; Gal. 5:17; Lu. 8 : 10 ; Jer. 
44 : 8, Sep.). He hardly can maintain himself. It is more 
broadly true that Abraham, out of the spontaneity of his own 
goodness, believed God, than that either God or he cultivated 
the faith /;/ order that he might " become a father of many 
nations." " Not being weak in faith— but was made strong 
in faith," present us again the subjective nature of the dative. 
The weakness would have been the " weak faith," and the 
strength such as it was, was undoubtedly the ^' faith." And 
therefore where it speaks of being " ?nade righteous by faith" 
{dative, 3 : 28), or " purifying by faith" (dative, Acts 15 : 9), 
the ^^ faith " must be the subjective righteousness. Awafidu 
to 7nake strong, a^cou, to make worthy, veKpou, to make 
dead, and diKaiou), to make righteous, all have subjective 
rights, and it must be a strong reason that shall turn aside any 
of these words in ou. "Considered not." ''Not" is 



142 ROMANS. 

absent from many MSS., and is given up by the Revisionists. 
It makes little difference. If we are to erase it, then it would 
mean that Abraham fully considered these things, and yet 
(v. 20) believed. And if we are to retain it, then it means that 
he did not regard or care about them. " Deadened ; " the 
past participle of the verb to make dead (veKpdo), see above). 
"Deadening." Ne/cpwaif, the act or fact of ''deadening'' 
bears the same relation to vmpoi^, to make dead, that 
SiKaiuaic, a making righteous in the verse below (v. 25) 
bears to Ji/ca^dw, to make righteous. "Doubted not in 
unbelief," and, once more, " made strong in faith." These 
are again instances of the dative (see above v. 19). The 
'■'unbelief was the doubt, and the "faith " was the strength, 
and why not, in corresponding grammar, " the faith " also 
"the righteousness" (v. 22)? "Beally" and "truly." 
"^/i-^ " (E. V. & Re.) in either of these cases (vs. 21, 22) 
would be miserably unmeaning. /cat, with Paul, has the 
strongest Hebraistic tendencies, and we should watch them. 
Vav (Heb.) is more versatile than the classic Kal 

23. But it was not written for his sake alone that it was 
reckoned to him, 24. But also for our sakes, to whom it 
will be reckoned when we believe upon Him who raised 
Jesus our Lord from the dead; 25. Who was given over 
for the sake of our offences, and raised for the sake of 
making us righteous. 

It is fearful exegesis that makes this refer to the body. If 
Christ had never died (we mean physically), and God had 
tormented Him, as indeed He did, in other and more life- 
enduring ways, and if Christ had never risen, but after sufficient 
sacrifice in pain had been carried like Enoch to Paradise (it 
would not have done so well, or else that would have been the 
plan), but it would have done just as well, as far as we have 
any knowledge. We run wild with mere rhetoric. Because 
the Bible tersely talks of our Saviour's "blood," we take that 
particular secretion, and think it actually did bear a central 
part in our Lord's atonement. The cross is equally colored 
up. God may have never seen a cross, and yet, incarnate in 



CHAPTER IV. 143 

a man, could have carried Him through greater torments (as 
He did), and just as sufficient, as far as we can divine. It is 
shameful that all the passages about rising should be attributed 
to that adventure at the sepulchre. That was a great event, 
and was often alluded to (Acts 10 : 41 ; i Cor. 15 : 4), and 
was a glorious evidence (Acts i : 22 ; 4 : 33), and was a great 
soteriological occurrence, for it restored the whole man to life, 
and sent Him presently to the glory of His kingdom. But it 
is a shame even to speak of it in this present text. ** Given 
over" (did, with accusative^ ^' on account of ) "for the sake 
of our offences." This was the whole broad account of our 
Saviour's sacrifice. To dream of it as happening with Pilate, in 
any sense but as an insignificant part of it, is to turn the whole 
scene into a superstition. " Given over'' Christ was a man 
descended through His mother from the first apostate. Christ 
was God, entered at His conception by the one personal 
Jehovah. Christ as man would have inherited from His race 
actual sinfulness, for the Bible tells us that He was " a dead 
man according to the flesh " (i Pet. 3 : 18), that He was " a 
saved one " (Zech. 9 : 9, see the participle), that " He offered 
for Himself as well as for the people" (Heb. 9 : 7), that He 
was the first begotten from the dead (Rev. i : 5), and that, 
though He was pure from sin for reasons that I am about to 
state, yet that He had " infirmity " (Matt. 26 : 41), nay, that 
He was *' compassed about with it (Heb. 5 : 2), and that '' He 
was tempted in all respects as we are, yet without sin " (Heb. 
4 : 15). But Christ as God revolutionized all these calamities. 
He " raised " the sufferer. That is the almost constant 
meaning of the "resurrection" (4 : 24, 25 ; Eph. 2 : 6). He 
entered the mother. He overshadowed her. He put the 
" power " of God upon her. By sheer strength He kept that 
cursed offspring from ever enduring sin. He kept Him 
from scarce anything else of curse or misery. He 
knew no sin ; neither was guile found in His mouth. 
And, as being God impersonate,, if " infirmity " had 
been all, we might conceive of Him as enduring pain 
enough for a personal expiation, and soon summoning 



144 ROMANS. 

" twelve legions of angels " to translate Him to His heritage. 
But that was not what He was created to accomplish. He 
was, therefore, ^'^ given over,'' as our text expresses it, for our 
mountains of transgressions, as well as for His own lighter 
implication in His parentage. His struggle was made difficult. 
His temptation became immense. It came on Him in great 
maelstroms of trial, till He cried out in fear of sinking. It 
came upon Him in the wilderness, when the dead fast of forty 
days was allowed to unman Him horridly for the trial, by its 
clammy and livid sinking upon His spirit. It broke out in 
blood among the olive trees (Lu. xxii : 44) ; and just at the 
last, when death seemed alone all that was possible to save 
Him, He shrieked out, as if lost, as though God had at last for- 
saken him — all this positively without sin. " Who in the days 
of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications 
with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save 
Him from death " (certainly not physical death, for then He was 
not saved at all) '■'■ and was heard in that He feared ; though 
He were a son, yet learned He obedience by the things that 
He suffered ; and being made perfect. He became the author " 
(E. V. and Re.), better, the ground or reason, the sine qua non^ 
the thing forensically required, for " eternal salvation unto all 
them that obey Him " (Heb. 5 : 7-9). " Given over," there- 
fore, means '■^ given over " to this horrid implication more than 
His own birth-nature would have required; and *^ raised'^ 
loses all its narrow connection of His rising from the grave^ 
and means ''raised from (among) the dead" {^plural, m 
veKpuv), that is, that He fought a good fight, and when 
the sins of the whole world were laid upon Him, and accord- 
ingly when He was exposed to a temptation whose mortal 
anguish (to the very last undeserved through His strange suc- 
cess in the battle) would be an equivalent for all our curse, 
that He was ''raised" out of this horrible pit, and brought 
safe to His eternal dwelling. " For the sake of making us 
righteous." Here it is, distilled down to its exquisite finality. 
Sin is the great curse. A spark of sin would have exploded 
all the magazine of mercy. Christ shut it out, but with an 



CHAPTER V. 145 

agony of self-deliverance. " He learned obedience," as trial 
became stronger by its previous throes (Heb. v. 8). 
And through anguish as a man, and by sheer omnipotence as 
a God, He was "raised" out of our horrible race (e/c ve/cpwv), 
and, needing no penalty Himself, bought *' righteous- 
ness," that is, an escape from sinfulness, for us miserable 
transgressors. '^Making us righteous ^ This StKaiuaig, 
enrighteoiising, which bears the same relation to diKaLou (to 
make righteous) that vcKpuaig, a deadening (v. 19), does to 
vtKpoui (to make dead), occurs but once besides in the 
New Testament, and that in the next chapter (v. 18). The 
phrase there is ^'■a makiiig righteous of life,'' the meaning being 
"<z making righteous,'' ox a making holy in such away that 
** life " shall consist in it. That passage is so near, however, 
that one may easily turn to its page, and we need not repeat 
the exposition. 



CHAPTER V. 

1 . Wherefore, having been made righteous by faith, let 
us keep possession of a peace with God through our Lord 
Jesus Christ. 2. Through whom, also, we have kept pos- 
session by faith of the entrance given into this grace 
wherein we have been standing, and let us exult over a 
hope of the glory of God. 

"Wherefore." Because the things just referred to were 
not written for Abraham's sake alone (4 ; 23, 24), but for ours 
who imitate Abraham in " believing on Him who raised Jesus 
our Lord from the dead," we ought to make Him our model in 
all respects, and especially in His endurance [vTzofiovijv, v. 4), 
and in His hoping against hope (4: 18). " Having been 
made righteous by faith," which is just the thing that has 
been declared of Abraham, " let us keep possession of a 
peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." This 
implies the possibility of our not keeping possession ; for 
though we might be willing to imagine that Paul was consid- 



146 ROMANS. 

ering that that would never happen, and was warning against 
it for the very purpose of preventing it, yet when we pile all 
the Scriptures together which bear upon such a question, they 
make the certain " perseverance of the saints " fatal to a con- 
sistent revelation (see comments on i: 11 ; 8: 33-39 ; also 
Lu. 8: 13 ; Ez. 18 : 24; Heb. 6: 4, 6 ; 10 : 38). " Through 
■whom also "we have kept possession;" again the natural 
remark to make if apostasy be possible. ** Let us keep 
possession of a peace with God through " that very same 
" Lord Jesus Christ through whom " we have been keep- 
ing possession of what he calls the " introduction " {Kpoaayuyij) 
or, as we translate it, " the entrance given," liter- 
ally the bringing into^ that is the incipiency of ** this grace 
wherein we have been standing," and then as a further 
counsel built upon the precariousness of this first " entrance into 
grace,'* let us "exult" or ^^ boast ourselves" — now, in what? 
A certainty ? Or in a full gospel fruition ? Not at all. But 
"over" just what Abraham had, that is "ahope"(4: 18), 
and " a hope " of exactly that which we should imagine ; not 
of " righteousness y' for that in a dim way we have already — 
that lessened sinfulness which consists in faith ; but of "the 
glory of God;" that perfect righteousness, which, as faith 
comes by looking at it (see i : 17), so light will come by the 
same means, " the light of the knowledge of the^/^ry of God in 
the face of Jesus Christ " (2 Cor. 4 : 6), the entrance into 
which gives us ^'^ faith,'' and the full result of which gives us 
our final blessedness ; just what John speaks of when he says, 
" When He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see 
Him as He is (i Jo. 3: 2). 

Godet complains : " No exegete has been able to account 
satisfactorily for this imperative " (£;^;w//ev, *^ let us have,' Re., 
ox ^^ let us hold fast ") ^^ occnrnng in the midst of our didac- 
tic development." But give up "perseverance," and give 
up Luther's " justification," and nothing can be more untrue. 
Load on those theologic weights, and we grant everything ; 
but what is that but saying that authoritative Greek works 
mischief with both those older rationalisms. 



CHAPTER V. 147 

Patriarchal " righteousness " was a " righteousness of faith " 
(4: 13) ; and the genitive signifies a ''^righteousness'' that 
consists in ''''faiths To throw that into a fuller shape, it was 
a '■''faith " so bred morally by the Spirit as to be " reckoned'' to 
the patriarch " as righteousness!' Let it be understood, how- 
ever, it was only "/^//^y " and therefore, though moral and 
answering to a condition of diminished sinfulness, yet it did 
not fulfill the law, but only began to. It gave '''■peace with 
God^' that is a cessation of enmity (8 : 7), because it is the 
earnest of what is perfect, and the pledge, even in its feeblest 
beginnings, of what grace will add. But it must be kept up. 
" Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch can not bear fruit 
of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye 
abide in me " (Jo. 15 : 4). " Possession^" therefore, must be 
" through our Lord Jesus Christ ; " and Paul urges us, in view 
of what ''^ for our sakes was written^" to ^^ keep possession" 
through this same Christ, just as we have been keeping posses- 
sion thus far of what he characterizes as the " introduction " or 
^'' entrance given" into the ''^ grace" of the Redeemer; still 
more, to " keep possession " boastingly, as Abraham did ; for he 
was " a person who against hope, hopefully believed " (4 : 18), 
answering thoroughly to the counsel, " Let us exult (boast, 
Kavxcjfteday sce 4: 2 and comment) over a hope of the glory of 
God" 

When, therefore, Meyer says that the old reading of the 
Receptus^ exofj,ev, " we have peace" (E. V.), which even the Revi- 
sionists give up, " is to be retained," and gives as his reason 
that hx^iitv (" let us, etc."), " though very strongly attested, is 
here utterly unsuitable" (!) ; and when Shedd says, "We 
retain ix^^iitv {'^ we have") upon dogmatic grounds (!), 
although the subjunctive ex^i^^ {^^ let us have ") is by far the 
most strongly supported ; " and when Alford, strangest of all, 
bows to the text and says, " It is impossible to resist the strong 
manuscript " evidence, " for, indeed, this may well be cited as 
the crucial instance of overpowering diplomatic authority," and, 
then, after all, rebels, and comments differently, we may well 
despair. If the Reformed did give a twist to orthodoxy, how 



148 ROMANS. 

are we to mend it, if they may now give a twist to Scripture, and 
where glosses otherwise fail, then overset the text that they 
may trample upon the more troublesome revelation ? 

3. But not only so ; let us even exult in the tribulations, 
knowing that the tribulation works patience, 4. But the 
patience probation ; and the probation hope ; 5 . And the 
hope makes not ashamed, because the love of God has been 
poured out in our hearts by a Holy Spirit given unto us. 

Paul abides singularly close to the point at issue. We are to 
^^ exult in hope'' (v. 2). Then, by a most unexpected turn, he 
tells us that we are to exult in trouble. That might appear tO' 
be a very opposite exultation ; but see how he brings them 
together. " Tribulation works patience " [vttoiiovt] ; liter- 
ally, "a remaining under^'' that is to say, ^^ enditrance'') \ 
"but" (j^, for there is a slightly adversative idea in these 
sentences as they seem to unite such apparent opposites),. 
" the patience, probation." Like the fable of the faggots, 
now that the great apostle unties his bundle, each stick is easily 
managed. Sorrow, patience. Why that, of course. What else 
could it work, as long as the sufferer " keeps possession " (v. 2) ? 
P atience^ proof . Equally, of course. For that is what God 
perpetually aims at, the putting us to proof . The word is from 
6oKL^dC,a)y which means to prove, like ores. The word is 
doKLfi-fjy the result of that trial. Sorrow, like a fierce heat, 
wox\iS patience. Patience, like the gold in ore, exhibits proof. 
And then the rest easily follows : A man's ^^ proved condition " 
(doKifirj), demonstrated to him by his ^^ patience,'' hr^tds^^ hope,'* 
and so the apostle comes round to a strong inducement for the 
required exultation (v. 2). 

But now he has a stronger. " Love " is the great antidote 
to fear ; and the absence of fear is, to " hope," what the 
absence of sin is, to righteousness. Another apostle has said, 
*' Perfect love casteth out fear " (i Jo. 4: 18). Paul is full 
of this grand consummation. He seems to think that love and 
fear are antagonisms. " God has not given us a spirit of fear, 
but of power and of love and of a sound mind " (2 Tim. i : 7). 
In ecstasy at God's love pouring itself out and radiant in ours, 



CHAPTER V. 149 

he scoffs at fear. " Who is he that condemneth ? It is Christ 
that died. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ? 
For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor 
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to 
come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature shall be 
able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ 
Jesus our Lord " (8 : t,^, 39). He half tears himself away, 
therefore, from lesser considerations, and suddenly announces, 
that *' the hope," that is this '^ hope " — the " hope" of Abra- 
ham and of every believing sinner — " makes not ashamed '* 
(the favorite Old Testament expression, Job 6 : 20 ; Ps. 34 : 5 ; 
Is. 20: 5). And why ? He scorns the patient track through which 
he has been arguing his way, and bursts out into one over- 
whelming reasoning. ^^ Ashamed/*' Why not? Because of 
" love" But mark the completeness of the reason given. 
First, because of " love." That itself is a great consideration. 
Because the " hope " is mixed all up with that undoubting, 
unreasoning, unfearing principle of affection. That might be 
ground enough. But mark the dexterous terseness. Second, 
"the love of God." This has become Pauline now. ''The 
glory of God" (2 Cor. 4:6; Rom. 9 : 23), " /"/^^ righteousness of 
God" (i : 17), "■ the name of God" {() \ 17) ; these are all things 
for tv^EL^ziq or showings, and we learn to read them as such as 
we meet them anywhere. The apostle bursts upon us with 
the most express of all ; for, thirdly, he makes " the love of 
God " to be " poured out in our hearts," and leaves no doubt 
of his meaning, for he says it is " by a holy Spirit given 
unto us." This has stood, '' the Holy Spirit" (Re.). But the 
Revisers themselves sometimes doubt (as also does the E. V.) 
and give the small 5(1:4;! Cor. 2 : 1 2 ; see also Rev. 1 1 : 1 1), 
and notice, too, the absence of the article. It makes not the 
slenderest difference. A holy spirit is given (Acts 6 : 10), and 
a Holy Spirit gives (i Cor. 2 : 13), and which positively should 
be printed in the text it is, many times, unnecessary to ask, and. 
just as often impossible to determine. 

6 — II. And now, with this fine beginning, Paul, in six more 
verses, goes on to ennoble '' the love " and, therefore, " the hope" 



I50 ROMANS. 

in two separate particulars. And it is important to see how 
this passage has been made difficult by an interwrapping of 
these different reasonings when they are utterly diverse. Let 
us mention them. One is that " the love " which is to be 
^'' poured into'' ours, or, to speak more after the pattern of pre- 
vious chapters, which is to be '' revealed," like any other trait 
of " God's righteousness, from faith to faith," is so phenomenal 
as therefore to be well suited to produce wonderful '< love " in 
us, and, therefore, wonderful '• /lope ; " but, secondly, and on 
rational grounds, that that " hope " is wonderfully promoted, 
because such an amazing " love^" so deep, that " while we 
were yet sinners, Christ died for us ** (v. 8), now that He has 
died, and the whole expense has been gone to, and we are 
actually "made righteous," and, as Paul truthfully reports it, 
"in His blood," that is, through the great effect of His 
redemption, " much more " may justify '' hope " and embolden 
it as it plumes its wing, (i) The essential buoyancy of "love " 
is helped by (2) the rational confidences of " hope,*' as it assures 
itself that such a "love," having " made (us) righteous by His 
blood," will save us " from wrath through Him." 
But let us translate : 

6. For when we were yet weak, Christ, through an 
opportunity for it, died for the ungodly. 7. For scarcely 
for a righteous man will any one die ; (for for the good 
man some one might, perhaps, dare to die) ; 8. But God 
enhances His own love towards us in that while we were 
yet sinners Christ died for us. 

"Enhances His own love." That, of course, swells ours. 
For if the conditions are complied with, that is, on God's part, 
the gift of the Spirit, and, on man's part, the resultant faith, 
God's love is the provocative of ours ; efficiently, by being 
** poured into our hearts " (v. 5), and instrumentally by being 
set before our eyes, so that by ardent " love" " hope " may 
burn its very brightest, and we may even "exult in God 
through our Lord Jesus Christ " (v. 11). " Without strength." 
That is the common rendering (E. V.), and it answers well 
enough, but " weak " is the literal word : and we keep it 



CHAPTER V. 151 

because of another passage. " What the law could not do in 
that it was weak through the flesh " (8 : 3). This is a thorough 
comment. When we were left to the flesh ; when we were 
like the devils ; when we belonged to that melancholy com- 
pany who, as the apostle marks them, being " in the flesh, can 
not please God " (8:8): when we were *' weak,'' therefore, in 
a way that precluded any other relief, " Christ through an 
opportunity;" — We seize here a chance for a very useful 
emendation. The devils had no ^^opportunity." Christ could 
seize none for them. He could not have " died for us" but 
for a rare chance in the administration of the heavens. Paul 
seizes the same idea where he calls Christ the altLOQ (what 
happened to be the required thing, the thing charged upon Him^ 
aiTLdofiai, the judicial or logical cause or ground) ** for 
eternal salvation " (Heb. 5:9). " Christ, through an oppor- 
tunity,'' made His advent, and became the al-ioq. And 
as to our right to the words, look at the vapid character of 
any thing else. " In due time " (E. V., " season," Re.) ! What 
has that to do with this wonderful affection ? The word is 
Kaip6v, meaning '^just measure." It is usually translated 
as of time, for " opportunity" marks a time, and is necessarily 
always of a specific date. We speak in English of an occasion 
from much the same habit of thought. But sometimes the 
Greek asserts itself. Paul speaks of " serving the Kacpog," 
meaning evidently that we are to ol^ey the opportunity (" serving 
the Lord," E. V., is from a varied reading, 12 : 11*). And in 
the Epistle to the Hebrews (11 : 15) we read of men having 
" an opportunity to have returned " (E. V.). There is no 
doubt about the sense. Paul commands us to " seize (our) 
opportunity by purchase " (Eph. 5 : 16). And, in classic 
Greek, the proof would be still more plenty. "Died." Of 
course not by crucifixion, except as included in His sufferings. 
He might have been beheaded, or, as we have seen (4 : 23-25), 
He might have not died at all. The wages of sin are far 
darker than death, except as death betokens them. All His 

* And may probably be the true one. See the comment in loc. 



152 ROMANS. 

humiliations are uttered under that most dismal syllable of 
rhetoric. " Died for." "-7;^ the place of *' would be true, but 
*^ for " is broader. "Scarcely for a righteous man will any- 
one die." The difference between "^ righteous man'' and 
"the good man" are not usually well declared (see the 
different commentators). The ^'■righteous man'' is a ^^ good 
man," and ^Righteousness," it ought to be kept in eye, is ail 
moral goodness ; but our writer, having let fidliq {^^ scarcely ") 
slip from under his pen, stops for an apology, and hence the 
"for," rather awkward in its sound, which seems established 
in the text. " Scarcely for a righteous man will any one die " 
(I say '''•scarcely " not to rob the glory of the Master, ''^ for " 
really *' for the good man," for that sweetest phase of moral 
righteousness, "some one might even dare to die"); "but 
God enhances awiaTr^oi, (see 3:5) His own love towards 
us," that is, makes it stand together in incomparable com- 
pleteness, " that while we were yet sinners, Christ died 
for us." 

9-1 1. Let it be understood, therefore, that the utmost 
" love " of the Almighty, exhibited in this extreme shape, and 
by the Holy Spirit ^'■poured out in our hearts " as its reflexive 
influence (v. 5), gendering, therefore, a ^Riope" only short of 
that which through '' perfect love casts out fear " (i Jo. 4 : t8), 
is now to be added to by those rational cow^di^no,^^ which these 
extreme thoughts reveal. He who loved me when I was a 
vile wretch, " much more " will love me when I have been 
incipiently " made righteous." 

9. Much more, then, having been now made righteous 
in His blood, shall we be saved by Him from the wrath. 
10. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to 
God by the death of His Son, much more, having been 
reconciled, shall we be saved in His life. 11. And not only 
so, but even with exultation in God through our Lord 
Jesus Christ, by whom now we have received the reconcili- 
ation. 

" Shall." The full salvation is future. " Made righteous; " 
only by that tincture of betterness which a slim faith begins. 
Nevertheless, it is "in His blood; " for, barred of that, even 



CHAPTER V. 153 

beginnings of righteousness are impossible. We shall be 
saved from the wrath, first, when our righteousness shall have 
become complete, and, second, when our perseverance has 
become certain, for there is but one promise, " He that endur- 
eth to the end the same shall be saved" (Matt. 10 : 22). 
"Saved in His life." Had Christ died in any graver sense, 
that is, had He met the fate which He cried out against with 
strong clamor and tears (Heb. 5:7); that is, had He succumbed 
to His infinite temptations, we would have been lost. And He 
said this to His disciples. He warned them in that paroxysm 
under the olive trees, " The spirit truly is willing (that is my 
liuman spirit), but the (my) flesh is weak " (Matt. 26 : 41). 
He cried out at their failure, and seemed to Himself the more 
imperilled for their desertion : " What, could ye not watch 
with me for one hour ? " And then — a fearful figure of a man 
.all clotted with the blood of His self-resistance — He cries out 
as though He would shake at them the finger of the most 
■earnest warning of His risk, '' Watch ye and pray, lest ye your- 
selves enter (by the fate of a failure) into (the results of this 
my) temptation" (Matt. 26: 41). '■^ Saved by His life,'' 
therefore, means saved by His not dying, that is not meeting 
with that dreadful '^ death " (Heb. 5 : 7) which would have fol- 
lowed if He had been beaten by temptation. No wonder 
Paul exults (v. 11), and that he exults "through Christ," 
and that he counsels us to " keep possession " also through Him, 
and that He does *' all things through Christ that strengthens 
(him);" adding, as he presently does again, that favorite 
adverb, ^^ much rather j" having borne the baptism of Kedron, 
" much more " will He go on to help. " For if, while we were 
enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His 
Son, much more, having been reconciled, shall we be 
saved in His life." 

It ought not to be necessary to add that the "reconcilia- 
tion" is in both directions, of God to us, and of us to God. 

12. The apostle is to go more deeply now into this ttoAAo) 
fxaTCXov or " much more'' idea as a foundation for exulting hope. 

12. "Wherefore, as by one man the sin passed into the 
world, so also the death by the sin, and thus the death 



154 ROMANS. 

passed through unto all men on to Him at whose expense 
all sinned. 

"Wherefore, as by one man the sin passed into the 
world." Of course it did ; for ^^ one man'' began the sinning. 
"So also the death by the sin." Of course it did ; for the 

threatening against ^^ the sin'' w2iS ^^ the death" (Gen. 2: 17). 
If Adam had no progeny, this much would have been fulfilled. 
The transient act of a single '' sin" which one might think of 
as perishing on its very stem, did no such thing, but bred 
" death j " and millions of sins would have been born increas- 
ingly in these two transgressors. So far the sentence might 
stand by itself, but Paul hurries the results. " Death," planted 
in Adam, "passed through," and the sequence was entire ; 
^^ passed through unto all men;" all were affected alike ; and 
then, rounding out the whole belief, ^^ passed through unto all 
men on to Him upon who?n" (that is, at whose charges or 
at whose expense) all did the sinning" " Wherefore ; " liter- 
ally " on account of this." By *' this " would then be intended 
nothing about Adam, for of our relation to that first pair this 
verse is the first to speak. The force of the illative has to do 
with this passing through unto Christ. ''On account of 
this" rtitis first to the reconciliation " (v. 11), and, second, 
to its being accomplished ^' by the death of (the) Son " (v. 10) ; 
and before he can carve out for himself another of these 
exulting expressions, ttoM jioKTmv (*' much rather "), he seeks 
now a base for it in tracking the " death " back to its original 
seat in the history of Adam. He had said before, " much more, 
being reconciled" the easier part will follow. Now he takes 
another leap. He goes back to where death "passed in," 
viz., to the sin of Adam, and his reasoning is to be. If 
sin is so terrible an evil that ** by the offence of one the 
many died," ho^sr '^ much more" glorious the grace whereby 
millions of offences, any one of which might have propa- 
gated sin, were swallowed up by one man's obedience. 
''Passed into the world" Eve's sin was the first known 
on the planet. "So also." This is a translation of the con- 
junction /ca/ (" ^^^") ; and that it is a proper one, take this 



CHAPTER V. 155 

from the very highest authority. It, /ca/, is also used " before 
the apodosis, and connecting it as a consequent with its 
protasis as its antecedent * * * where the apodosis 
affirms what is or will be done in consequence of, because of, that 
which is contained in the protasis, e. g., and so, and therefore, for 
example Acts 7 : 43, ' Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, 
and the star of your God Remphan, figures which ye made to 
worship them : and (so that) I will carry you away beyond 
Babylon,' quoted from Amos 5 : 27 " (Robinson's Lex. ; see 
also Robinson upon waTrep, and refer to Math. 25 : 14 and 
2 Cor. 8 : 7.) Here then is the much desired apodosis of this 
critical passage. Some (Clericus, Wolf) have imagined that 
KoX ovTu^ began it, (" even thus "), but oi»rw koX means " even thus," 
and the whole logical apodosis is more thoroughly gathered up 
if we gather into it all the, consequences of " the sin." These 
were, first, the death of Adam ; second, the death of all men, 
not even excepting Christ, and, third, the passing through to 
Christ, for the purposes of the " reconciliation " (v. 10), of that 
" death " (v. 6-8) which he endured for the redemption of the 
sinner. The order then was first, " sin," that is Eve's sin ; then 
*^ death," tha.t is Eve's ^^ death" and Adam's; then '■'■ death" 
passing through to ^^ all men," that is sinfulness and all forms 
of " death j " then " sin " in all, as a consequence of sinfulness ; 
and then " death " to Christ, a " death " deep and awful, but not 
sinful ; a " death " passed over to our Substitute, *' on whom," 
with a force not unusual to kiri, or " at whose expense " all did 
the sinning. *' On to him on whom " seems a great deal to put 
into £0'w, but it is not at all too much even in classic literature. 
•Oc has this sort of ricochet of sense very continually. The 
expressions we have already seen, ^^ as being one who " (3 : 30 ; 
4 : 18) are kindred in their make. Luke talks '■^ of those things 
which" (E. v.), when all is expressed by dv (Lu. 9 : 36). The 
thief talks " of those things which (we have done) " Lu. 23 : 41 ; 
still nothing but uv. Paul has the same expression, wv, " of 
those things which " (E. V., Rom. 15 : 18) ; and again in Corin- 
thians, *' Did I make a gain of you by any of them (wv) whom I 
sent unto you?" (2 Cor. 12 : 17). But still more to our pur- 



156 ROMANS. 

pose, he has this very exact speech e^w, and twice in other 
parts of his epistles. Let me say, however, first, that Luke has 
it : — " Took up that whereon " (e^'w, Luke 5 : 25). Paul has 
it in the plural, " zVz those things whereof — all expressed by 
ffolf (6: 21). And then in the singular, '■^ that for which 
(e<j>'o)) also I am apprehended " (E. V., Phil. 3 : 12) ; and 
again, " where in " (V't', or, " as to that in which ") " ye were 
also careful " (E. V., Phil. 4 : 10). The warrant of a transla- 
tion could hardly be more established. The polemic aspects 
of this reading (which, however, are not doctrinal at all, for it 
is fairly on the orthodox side) would carry us too far. We can 
shorten our book by mere positive explication. Other render- 
ings give their reasons ; and though our version might often 
be propped by a comparison with others, yet it is expensive as 
to time, and, perhaps, we should have clearer views if each 
exegete fenced himself off chiefly to his own exposition. The 
fixings of this verse are legion. The great thorn that besets 
its explication is the want of an apodosis. Our common 
Bibles stride over five verses to obtain one ; and when they 
reach the eighteenth verse, what have we ? One little more in 
the shape of this literary need than any of the five which have 
thus interrupted, most improbably, Paul's wonderful density 
and subtlety of speech. Then when we roll off the pestering 
question, and have our shorn protasis to ourselves, what can we 
do next? 'E^'o has had a century of meanings. If we trans- 
late " in who7n^'' we violate the preposition. Paul would have 
said " in who77i^'' and not " on whom'' Again, the grammar. 
Adam is far back. Plural nouns would interpose to defeat the 
pronoun. Again, we throw endless questions into the theology. 
What is meant by sinning in Adam ? It would be aTraf 'kzy6iitvov. 
We die in him (i Cor. 15 : 21) ; but where do we ever hear 
that we sin in him ? Some think that we were actually present, 
and, in the loins of our father, ate, quoad 2i legality of ill-desert, 
the baleful sorrow. Others deny this. It is a turning point of 
infinite strait. And though it is flatly certain about Adam that 
we know no more than two all sufficient realities, first, that it 
is by nature that a bad father should produce a bad son, and, 



CHAPTER V. 157 

second, that it \sjust (though of such high administrations we 
can argue in our own Hght literally nothing), yet this passage 
has started another theory, viz., that though it would be ridicu- 
lous that we sinned in him in any actual thereness at the time, 
yet that we sinned federally, a covenant having been made 
with Adam, not only for himself but for his children, when 
there is not a word of the covenant in print, and we have not 
the slenderest ground of any such conception in the history. 
A bad acorn makes a bad oak. A fig tree does not produce 
olive-berries. And since man is not a fig tree, there must be 
another fact in the heredity, and that is sufficiently revealed, 
viz., that it isjust in God, and, therefore, we may say necessary, 
to let this law of the universe extend to His sensitive crea- 
tion. 

But not only has the translation " i?i who??i " created debate, 
but the conjunction-v^ndtxmg of the words has been still more 
unsettling. " For that " is the rendering of our versions (E. V. 
and Re.). Well now, how ^^ for that? " " Death passed upon 
all, for that all have sinned " (E. V.). But why " for that " or 
" because ? " It is common to say. They die because they sin. 
But this is not so. They die for Adam's sin, and if there is 
anything personal to be considered, we must turn the sentence 
the other way. Either they sin because they die, or, what is 
more vitally to be considered, they are " dead in sin " (Eph. 
2 : i), just as we are " righteous in faith " (dative), that is ** in 
the shape of faith " (3 : 28). In other words death and sinful- 
ness are, in the main point (that is leaving off the other evils 
of death), interchangeably the same great evil. If, on the 
other hand, we take the Revision view, and read ''for that all 
sinned'' (aorist), Dr. Shedd is ready to say that we were there 
according to his subjective view of the Adamic imputation, and 
Dr. Hodge to re-open the debate, and insist upon the federal 
inness or oneness in the original transgression. Giving e^'w 
an understanding which brings an apodosis to the first clause, 
and making z-kl mean " on^'' and restoring it to its proper signi- 
fication, we draw the lines back to where they cease to be 
polemic, and we exhume a sense in which all Christians are at 



158 ROMANS. 

one, and which is about all that has been taught to us of our 
apostasy in the Garden of Eden. 

Making mi mean " upon^'' which is its straight-out and most 
necessary signification, would be enough for our purpose, for 
** upon " Christ in the most literal sense men have been loading 
down their guiltiness. But ettc so distinctly means more (Lu. 
12 : 44; 9 : 49), and so specially means /<? a man's account or 
at his hazard^ or, as we would say in trade, at his charges (Dem. 
822 : 10; Lu. 4 : 4; 9 : 49; Acts 2 : 38; 9 : 17, 18), that we have 
not hesitated to give immediate facility to the sense by this 
form of interpretation. 

13. For as far as there was law, sin was in the world ; but 
sin is not imputed where there is no law ; 14. Yet death 
reigned from Adam to Moses, and over those who did not 
sin after the similitude of the transgression of Adam, he 
being a person who is of the pattern of the Coming One. 

Barnes says of all this (vs. 12-21): It "has been usually 
regarded as the most difficult part of the New Testament." 
But let us take it all carefully to pieces. Paul has been helped 
amazingly by Jewish quotations. Of enrighteousment by faith 
he has fine support in the sentence, " The righteous by faith 
shall live." So he has reaped much from the Patriarch ; and 
much from the Patriarch's eulogy — " His faith was reckoned 
to him for righteousness." But, wishing to celebrate " the 
gospel^'' which he had pronounced to be the subject of the 
Epistle (i : i, 15), and, therefore, to make much of the sacrifice 
of Christ, " one man " for millions, he is naturally drawn to 
extend his base over that other man's foundation, and to say, 
\i'''^ one man " could ruin the world, ^^ ffiuch more " has another 
man saved it. But now, by a singular fatality, there is precious 
little Scripture about that other " one man,'' and no great text 
like that about the believer and about Abraham. There is a 
mention in the narrative in Genesis, and no mention again in 
all the Hebrew. The facts were so patent that they required 
no mention. That very obviousness was the exact stand for 
Paul. It will be seen that he demonstrates nothing. But the 
structure of his speech is a mere terse appeal to the facts that 



CHAPTER V. 159 

were unchallenged. He had said, '•'■ Death passed through to 
ally He quotes nothing, for there is nothing to quote. And 
for that very reason, because the results of Adam's sin (except 
in the Apocrypha, 2 Esd. 3 : 21; 7 : 11, 12, 48; Eccles. 9 : i), 
had not been thrown into shapes of their synagogue speech, he 
goes back to first principles in the matter, and makes ready, by 
a skilful word, for the use of the first man as "of the pattern 
of the Coming One." How could he show that ^^ death had 
passed through to all (v. 12) ? That all were sinners he could 
quote, and had quoted with more than usual decision (3 : 10, 
19). But how all came to be sinners was another affair, and 
he traces that in a chronological way, and lays it at the door of 
the original transgression. " As far as there was law sin was 
in the world." That he lays down at once. He had already 
taught that all had sinned (3 : 23). But he was willing to go 
back, and make things more sweeping by a challenge. He was 
willing to admit that men were not sinners who had " no law." 
That is a plain truism. And he mentions it only to assume it. 
If I have nothing to teach me righteousness, I have nothing to 
breed me " sin'' There is no mystery in this. It is a plain, 
every-day thought which the apostle had previously noticed 
(4: 15). But he adds to it. " Sin is not imputed," that 
is, can not be reckoned or punished, " where there is no law." 
If a man is punished, it is a sign he has both " law " and 
^' si7i J " and, thus reasoning backward, he carries us through 
all the passage. " Death " not only existed, but it absolutely 
** reigned." And it '* reigned," not only in common times with 
which they were all familiar, but in times of less law, or, in 
Oriental exaggeration (see comment on 4: 15, also i Jo. 3: 4), 
of no law at all, such as those *' between Adam and Moses; " 
and not only in times of " no law" comparatively (just as our 
Saviour speaks of no sin, Jo. 15 : 22, and Paul of not being 
sent to baptize, i Cor. i : 17), but when they *' had not sinned 
after the similitude of Adam's transgression," that is, as 
standing for a race, with the awful heinousness of sinning 
away a world, and with the horrid criminality of plunging 
into sin out of a condition of light and righteousness. These 



i6o ROMANS. 

are the simple reasonings of the apostle ; " Death has passed , 
through unto all^'" because all show it ; and that not in physical 
" deathj' but in a thousand other symptoms. And as " sin is not 
imputed where there is no law^' and '' death " can not be inflicted 
except as a reckoning for sin, it follows from the universality 
of pain, that there is a universality of sin, and, therefore, a 
universality of law, and, hence, from the whole picture of 
the facts, a need of tracing the history to an original trans- 
gressor. 

It must be distinctly marked, however, how the Bible keeps 
diligently in view sinfulness as the punishment of sin. Just 
as Christ's great grace is righteousness, that is holiness, and it 
is sad that we have frittered it away into a forensic justifica- 
tion, so Adam's great curse was sinfulness, and we have 
frittered it away into '^ death " with a less radical sense than 
that imputed by the words of the apostle, ''the wages of sin is 
death,'' that is, more sinfulness, the undoubted agonies of 
wrath being only the nimbus around the great essential sub- 
stance of the punishment. '' In the day thou eatest thereof, 
thou shalt die." See how closely Paul follows the reality. 
" Sin " he couples instantly with " death,'' and we find he 
gives no countenance to any thing but this : that our great 
curse in Adam is just what a fig-tree might inherit — character. 
Paul seems to think that enough. I get from Adam charac- 
ter. That is " death " in its very essence. To feel any thing 
painful I must have both law and sin. *' Law " I certainly 
do have in my natural conscience, and " sin " all men show ; 
and " death " is nothing more than " sin," except as there go 
with it temporal and eternal sorrows. 

" As/ar as." This is almost the original sense oi axpcg. 
*A/cpoc nieans to the utmost edge of. "A^Kpaxslp means to the ejid of 
the hand. "Axp^g usually means " until " (E. V. & Re.), a very nat- 
ural sequence from the other meaning. But Xenophon says : 
"As long as {axpcg) they do not hunger " (Conv. 4 : 37). Luke 
says : " For (cixpc) five days " (Acts. 20 : 6), and we read in the 
Hebrews : While (or as long as) it is called to-day " (3 : 13). 
It is a preposition singularly philosophic in describing just 



CHAPTER V. i6i 

how great sin is. It is sin just as far as it is against conscious 
" lawr 

Other and adverse renderings would fill a volume by them- 
selves if we attempted to reply to them. They are positively 
numberless. In the throes of difficult exposition such as 
Barnes speaks of, it is astonishing how good men forget them- 
selves. Like a woman in her agony, they say things that they 
could not be forced to utter in moments of ease. This, for 
example — it is from the grand work edited by Ellicott : 
" Strictly speaking, there could be no individual sin till there 
was a law to be broken. But in the interval between Adam 
and Moses, /. <?., before the institution of law, death prevailed 
over the world ; which was a proof that there was sin some- 
where. The solution is, that the sin in question was not the 
individual guilt of individual transgressors, but the single 
transgression of Adam " {in loco). 

Here, really, is where we should push, to force the necessity 
of some more reasonable rendering. Nearly all the commen- 
tators side with Ellicott. The theologizing is really dreadful. 
Egypt could build Cheops, but did not know that to rob 
widows was wicked ! Wait till some other page, and these 
same men will be extreme upon the perdition of the heathen ! 
We sometimes think passing by a sentence would be wise. It 
would ennoble an exegete sometimes. ' This paragraph 
puzzles me, and I pass it.' For surely it must injure the unde- 
vout when critics put hand to every sentence, and are mani- 
festly dazed into a reading which makes the whole world for 
twenty centuries ; with Enoch in it, who walked with God ; 
with Noah in it, who was a preacher of righteousness ; with 
Abel in it, who obtained witness that he was righteous ; with 
Nimrod in it, a great founder of empire ; with Abram in it, 
before the giving of the law ; and with a world in it before the 
flood given up to wickedness ; yet, in all that time, simply 
guilty in Adam ; as Ellicott sanctions it, '' without a law to be 
broken," and, therefore, with no individual guilt of individual 
transgressors ; the flood, of course, drowning no sinners, but 
only hapless heritors of the guilt of our great mother ! 



i62 ROMANS. 

We base every thing upon the fall of Adam, but that every 
thing is in the chief part sinfulness, and sin can not be reck- 
oned for where there is no law. And we base every thing 
upon the sacrifice of Christ, and that every thing is in chief 
part our own righteousness, very sinful indeed at first, but 
gradually growing more righteous, as Augustine represents,* 
and which can not be realized except under fresh law and 
under fresh probation. It is under these parallels '•''of the 
one man^'' and ^^ the one man,*' that Paul introduces the sentence 
that the first man " was after the pattern (not a type" E. V., 
simply, or, least of all, '' a figure,'' Re., simply, but '■''after 
the pattern," t]i3Lt is, in a kindred positio7i),ot "the Coming 
One." 

15. But not as the offence so also is the grace: for if in 
the offence of the one the many died, much more did the 
grace of G-od, and the gift in grace which is of the one 
man, Jesus Christ, flow over to the many. 

Godet complains that ** this passage (vs. 15-17) has ex- 
hausted the sagacity of commentators." The "three verses," 
he adds, " are among the most difficult of the New Testament." 
His account of other authorities is curious and suggestive. 
** Morus holds that in vs. 15-19 the apostle merely repeats the 
same thing five times over in different words ; Riickert sup- 
poses that Paul himself was not quite sure of his own 
thoughts ; (while) Rothe and Meyer find in these scenes traces 
of the most profound meditation and mathematical precision. 
Notwithstanding the favorable judgment of the latter it must 
be confessed that the considerable variety of expositions seem 
still to justify to some extent the complaints of the 
former." (!) 

Let us, however, observe two rules, and watch their efficiency. 
The one is, not to imagine that the apostle is designing to say 
more than he actually says. We are constantly confused by 
mixing the hn with the 6l6ti. Paul is simply saying that if 

* "Justification here is imperfect in us " (Vol. v. p. 867). "When our 
hope shall be completed, then also our justification shall be completed " 
(Vol V. p. 790) . 



CHAPTER V. 163 

** tne offence '* ruined us,* " much more " will " the grace " 
save us. Is not that true ? And if you answer, yes ; but 
before we can see that it is, we must see the reason ; that 
brings us to our second point, that we daze ourselves by 
imagining one reason. Paul could give many reasons, too 
many to put into the verse. And, therefore, we must expound 
in that way. " But not as the offence^ so also is the grace, for " — 
This ^^for' is the for of statement, not of explanation. 
" The offence " differs from " the grace " in this, not because of 
this ; and the respect or modus of the difference is simply 
thus, that if the one damns, " much more " may the other save. 
Now the real fact is that the reasons are endless, and the mul- 
tiplicity of the list is partly that which has confused our think- 
ing. Paul, let it be remembered, is inflating our hopes (v. 5) 
with all sorts of joy and boasting (vs. 2, 3) in the Gospel. 
For this cause he has gone back to our apostasy, and, clear- 
ing up in a sentence or two our ruin, he wishes to show how 
much more triumphant '^ grace " is m our escape, than sin ever 
was in effecting our downfall. That then is our second point, 
that the reasons are many, and Paul did not attempt to put 
them in a list. In the first place, grace is the more welcome 
principle. God loves it the best, and will be sure, if it be safe, 
to prefer it. " He that spared not His own Son, how shall 
He not with Him freely give us all things ?" (8: 32). Paul has 
been insisting upon this in the chapter previous (vs. 15-17). 
Agtiiny ^^ g?'ace " actually wins. In the experience of all the 
saints ruin attacks all, and '■^ grace " comes in and conquers it. 
It has the last hand ; and if we would listen to its voice, it 
would save every one of us. Once more, it overflows. This 
is the respect that is most suggested. That word which Paul 
here only for the second time employs (see 3: 7) he seems to 
enjoy heartily hereafter. And what can it mean ? However 
Christ was implicated, undoubtedly he was implicated in the sins 
of the whole world. We believe that he was implicated person- 

* We must observe the " dative of material." " T/ie offence of the one** 
was not merely the instrument, but the very " material " of our death. We 
therefore say "in," not ''by'' (E.V. & Re.). 



1 64 ROMANS. 

naily in Adam, and, as Peter expresses it that " He was a dead 
man (unless * saved ', Zech. 9: 9) according to the flesh " (i Pet. 
3:18). But all agree that He needed ^^ grace" (Ps. 45: 2; Jo. 1:14) 
and if He needed ^^ grace'' in His human nature, it must over^ 
flow beyond Himself if any ^^ grace " is to reach the world. 
This overflowing thing is " the gift in grace which is of the one 
man Jesus Christ^ But now, not only, as we have stated, must it 
overflow beyond Christ, but it must overflow h^yondi all the uses 
of the world. The primal curse lighted — every ounce of it ; but 
the final grace flowed over and to spare. Bad men feel every 
atom of the blight, but good men simply bathe in an overflow. 
The ocean of '■'■grace " would not cease to " abound'' (E. V.) if 
all had been wise, and the whole world were steeped in its 
glorious baptism. 

We discard ^' free gift" (E. V. & Re.), which is a good 
enough word for x^P'-'^H-o-, ^^'^ aptly translates it, in order to 
keep near to x^pi-^ {^^ grace "). ;^;d|0fc7/^a is " the grace" bestowed, 
while x^pi-^ is the principle of ^^ grace." The two words ought 
to be translated alike in the same sentence. 

But now more specifically : 

16. And not as by one that sinned, the gift ; for the judg- 
ment was from one to condemnation, but the grace was 
from many offences to a making righteous. 

"Grift;" not jd/j^CT/^a in this instance, but 66pT]fia, the simple 
word for ^^ gift." Xdptofia occurs below, obviously with 
intended difference, and we translate it " grace." On the 
contrary, " from one to condemnation " and " from many 
offences to a making righteous," employ the same preposi- 
tion, and the E. V. deserts the common ek, and alternates it as 
"/^_y" and "<?/." Obviously the £/c should be retained. And 
though the idea modifies itself as between the one clause and 
the other, yet the very reaching for the connecting link clarifies 
the passage. Sin in each case was the occasion. In the one 
case it bred curse, and in the other '■^ grace ; " in the one case 
by the law of the empire which bred " death" and, in the other, 
by the law of the same empire, which gave life if the justice of 
Heaven could be satisfied in our salvation. Now, the whole 



CHAPTER V. 165 

object of the passage is — another '^ 7nuch more " exultation. For 
if one offence was so stingingly complete as to work mischief to 
millions of a race, how gloriously abounding must that ^^ grace " 
be that can take a million of Adams, with millions and millions 
of trespasses, and counterwork at this late date what has been 
seating itself by increase for thousands of years. How thor- 
oughly this illustrates the text (v. 20), " Where sin grew 
greater, grace flowed over in greatness." " To a making 
righteous." This is the word already remarked upon (i : 32 ; 
2 : 26). It is the noun from StKaidu, to make righteous^ which 
means, according to Greek structure, an instance of d^/caidw, that 
is " a making righteous'' Protestant expositors, of course, say 
^'■justification " (E. V. & Re.), yet it cannot be translated so in 
most cases, (Lu. 1:6; Heb. 9 : i, 10 ; Rev. 15 : 4), and even 
that Latin word to justify, by nature means to make righteous. 
As " one man " makes us sinful, the Other Man makes us right- 
eous. Of course the significance is complete, and, for the 
point greatly insisted upon (Alford, Meyer, Fritz), that it 
stands opposed here to ^^condemnation,'' that proves too much. 
Sanctification is opposed to" condemnation" (Gen. 4:7; Heb. 
10 : 10-14 113:12); and so is cleansing (Lev. 14 : 18, 29 ; 
Job II : 15 ; I John i : 7, 9) ; and so is any other fruit of the 
Spirit (i Jo. 4 : 18). Such reasonings should not be resorted 
to. In many a large theology the very same covers of a book 
enclose the same author, fencing by the same method, in flat 
opposite direction in the use of kindred passages. If one sin 
debauched our race hereditarily, how much more grand " the 
grace," when the poison has spread into myriads of sinners, 
that can get hold of all that will obey (yes, and get hold of 
^^ many" and make them obey), and make them righteous in 
spite of their iniquity ! 

17. " For." Now the apostle will sum the previous verses 
(15, 16) together : 

17. For if in the oflfenee of the one death reigned by the 
one, much more shall they who receive the overflow of 
the grace and of the gift of the righteousness, reign in life 
by the one Jesus Christ. 



1 66 ROMANS. 

The only advance in this verse, as it gathers the last two into 
one, is in its tone and in its fuller sentiment of boastfulness. 
What in the fifteenth verse is dyt?tg^ swells out in this seven- 
teenth verse into a wilder triumph, for Paul calls it the reign 
of death. What in the fifteenth verse was in the past, advances 
now into all the glory of the future. And what before was our 
poor souls reaching the overflow of grace and being saved by 
it, is now the " reign " of grace, when it shall take entire pos- 
session, and, what is more, the " reign " of " life," and, what 
is more still, of that " life " of which he has already spoken — 
thdit enrighteousment which constitutes life (i : 17), that living 
which consists in being righteous (8 : 6), or, to go no further than 
this text, that receiving of " the overflow of the grace and of 
the gift of the righteousness " which shall constitute a reign 
in the shape of glorious " life through the one man Jesus 
Christ." We speak with more emphasis of this subjective 
sense because kv ^w^ {^^ in life'') lies ambiguously between 
receiving and reigning. Like many another sentence, it is to be 
considered as making no difference whether we read receiving 
in the shape of life^ or reigning in the shape of life. We have a 
right to either, and, therefore, to both. No mortal can choose 
ivypdii^avL ; just as it makes not the slightest difference whether 
we say (i : 17) ^' The righteous shall live by faith," or 
*' Those righteous by faith shall live." In the language of the 
Spirit those are Providential forms ; and that is a stone of Sisy- 
phus that men are heaving, when opposite creeds attempt to 
wrestle with but half-denied and, perhaps, wholly meant 
ambiguousnesses (i : 3, 6 ; 5 : 5 ; 16 : 2). 

18. Therefore then as by one offence there came that for 
all men which was for condemnation, so also by one right- 
eous-making there came that to all men which was for 
enrighteousment of life. 

Paul gathers himself back, now, for a general conclusion. 
Every time he asserts the parallel, he brightens it by some 
new feature of its truth. " Therefore then ;" that is, gather- 
ing all these lights together. " By one oflTence." We have 
been accustomed to the reading " by the offence of one " (E. V.), 



CHAPTER V. 167 

and might set it down as a harmless ambiguity (see last verse). 
The thing is repeated, '' By the righteousness of one " 
(E. v.). We would translate it, ^'- by making one righteous,'' 
and our meaning would be that '' by one enrighteousment,* 
that is, by '' the righteous making " of Christ, He was lifted 
out of the grave of death (i Pet. i : 3), and was able to 
impute His sufferings to His people. It will be seen 
that ^^ by one enrighteousmenf or ''''by the enrighteousinent 
of one^" makes not the smallest difference in the sense. 
We choose " by one offence " rather than " by the offence of one^* 
because, simply in the grammar, we are in doubt whether there 
is any ambiguity at all. An adjective with a noun, if they be 
in the same case, have probably the chiefest right to be under- 
stood together. What rule could there be for separating 
them ? Grammar, like electricity, takes the shortest cuts, and 
though strong reasons in the sense might justify a divorce, 
yet here the reasons are the same. Paul is wending towards 
his end, and, therefore, the terseness of '' ojte enrighteousment,'* 
that is, one Adam made righteous to balance one Adam become 
a sinner, is just that neat phrase which Paul, in his magic of 
speech, would be very apt to bring into his reasoning. 
" There came that." King James fills this gap from the six- 
teenth verse, and reads, ^^ judgment came " in one clause, and 
^^ the free gift earned But these large italics are a sort of 
reflection upon Paul. In many such cases a more rightful 
and idiomatic provision was intended. Paul delights in what 
every body must see and yield to ; and, therefore, making his 
craft as sharp as he can upon the water, he utters that which 
every body must concede, namely, that there was something in 
the one offence that was for condemnation, and that such was 
the something in the one enrighteousment. At any rate, it is 
a capital rule, as we have seen already (see 3 : 9), not to sup- 
ply italics, even when, with a still greater number of words, 
we can keep within the lawful meaning of what is written. 
" Righteous making." King James has it ''righteousness** 
The Revisers, driven by the Greek, give us " act of righteous- 
ness,** Ex necessitate theologice beyond a question. AiKaiufia, it 



1 68 ROMANS. 

is safe to say, never means " righteousness ; " and though there 
may be lexicons that say that it does, yet they are Protestant 
lexicons, not classical. And yet '' righteous acty* except in the 
narrowest significance, is still more unmanageable. A sinful 
act ruined us, but what " righteous act " ever saved us ? What 
exactly do the Revisers mean ? If they mean some act of 
God, that would depart entirely from our parallel. And if 
they mean some act of ^^ the one,'' prythee what act? How 
much more satisfactory the sense if we can get back to the 
usual meaning of this form derived from ow ? Here were 
"one ma?i " and " one man*' One of these men sinned, and by 
the confession of almost every Christian " there came that for 
all men which was for condemnation." The other man be- 
longed to this " all men," and would have come into this 
" condemnation " but for grace and power of His incarnate 
Godhead. As it v/as, He was ''infirm" and desperate in His 
** temptations," and this, not by any theory of ours, but by the 
express words of accepted revelation. He is not so now, but 
has been " made perfect," and it was in " being made perfect " 
that He became the airtog, that is the required ground of 
eternal life to all them that obey Him " (Heb. 5 : 9). What 
is this perfectness ? He calls it bei?ig sanctified (Jo. 17 : 19). 
It is called learniftg obedience. (Heb. 5:8). He is spoken of 
as " begotten from the dead," and, constantly, as "raised up" 
(8 : 11). And we have the most glaring evidence that des- 
perate moral temptation was the secret of His suffering, and 
the battle that He fought for our soul's deliverance. Now, no 
mortal imagines that His winning was human. He was " made 
righteous," and that by the Deity, one within Him. He never 
sinned. He was spotless from the very beginning. But He 
was weaker (Jo. 17 : 19) in the beginning than at the end ; 
and the change between, is what is called " bei7tg madeperfect." 
He was eminently " made righteous ; " for the Most High, 
who overshadowed Mary, would have left Him to be sinful if 
He had not made Him to be righteous. And this enrighteous- 
ment continued. With the Almighty it was a stinted holding up. 
With the man it was an awful struggle. With us it was our 



CHAPTER V. 169 

great salvation. And as by one offence we all were damned, 
by this ^'' one enrighteousment " there came that to us which 
might be for our own " enrighteousment of life." 

Not much remains to be explained. AiKalufia means tAe thing 
or act or subjective occurrence that makes righteous. c^LKaiaaL^ 
means the act of making righteous. A nice sense will appreci- 
ate the difference. The former, in the Old Testament, is 
most frequently translated ''statute,'' because a statute makes 
right either by being obeyed or by bringing punishment. 
AiKaiuctq is rarely employed (in the New Testament only twice, 
4 : 25 ; 5 : 18). We infer not the smallest difficulty in the 
present text. If we may coin the word '' enrighteousmenty' 
■which explains itself, the meaning is, that as by one sin there 
resulted to many condemnation, so by one enrighteousment 
(not quite so narrow as the sin, because it was wrought out in 
many acts, and lasted for thirty years) many were made 
righteous. 

" Ally There should be no danger of Universalism in this 
^ord, even if Paul had not said what he had about faith 
{4 • 5> 9)- The terseness comes in as guard. He does 
not say that all men were made righteous, but *' there 
£ame that to all men which was for enrighteousment of life'* 
^'' Life'' occurs here as elsewhere (Jo. 5: 29). It is the 
genitive essentice. The meaning of the whole is that " as 
l)y man came death, by man came also " that sort of resurrec- 
tion in which the " life " is, in its chief substance, righteousness. 

19. For as by the disobedience of the one man the many 
"were made sinners, so also by the obedience of the one the 
many shall be made righteous. 

This seems to require no notice. It is all that has gone before, 
clarified into the sense we have been distilling. Its beauty is 
that it is more express. The last clause projects us into the 
future. We are really not righteous here, but " by the obedi- 
ence of the one many shall be made righteous." It is 
■only in this way that the truth can be final. "By the diso- 
bedience of the one" we were " made " (E. V. and Re.), not 
reckoned to be, but actually constituted sinners, so, of course, if 



I70 ROMANS. 

we take the thing in its most rightful argumentation, " by the 
obedience of the one the many shall be made (that is constituted') 
righteous."' 

20. But, side by side, law came in so that the oflFence grew 
more and more ; but where the sin grew more, the grace 
overflowed the further, 21. So that as the sin reigned in 
the death, so also the grace would reign through righteous- 
ness unto eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Paul does not teach us that men sinned without "law," any 
more than they were righteous without law. The presence of 
law was necessary to both sin and righteousness. Neverthe- 
less sin and law could be looked at apart, and that in a very 
essential way. A man would be a sinner if he came out of 
the loins of Adam, and yet he could not be a sinner without 
conscience and a law. The verb, therefore, is a very striking^ 
one: ^^ entered along,'' ox. "side by side." Nothing could be 
more real. The very same man we get our sin from, we get 
our conscience from. Our moral nature comes down to us in 
our descent from Adam. It would not be hard to state the 
two facts together. An imperfect conscience, that is an imper- 
fect sense of law in its inner principles, is itself our sinfulness ," 
so getting an imperfect conscience from Adam unites the two 
facts of sin and law. Nevertheless law enters endlessly after- 
ward. Sinai added to it. And each lesson in our duties is a 
new entrance of law. Now the law enters, not iit order ^^ that'*" 
(E. V. and Re.). This iva is endlessly misused. It is the 
expression of result (Gal. 5 : 17). We are to keep clear of 
the other idea. God never sent the law in order to damn us. 
Paul is going deep into his facts and teaching us the nature 
of our ruin. The law came in along side {Trapeio^Wev) of our 
descent from Adam, and each increase of law increased our 
sinfulness. In fact, we could have no sin without some law, 
and the law comes further in with the result of adding to our 
iniquity. And now with this fresh start from our misery in the 
Fall, Paul makes corresponding boast of the overflow of the 
gospel. " But side by side law came in so that the oflTence 
grew more and more ; but where the sin grew more the< 



CHAPTER VL 171 

grace overflowed the further." These are not the same 
words. " Grew more " is from the word TrAe/wv (more), whereas 
" overflowed the further " is a term of the sea, and means 
hyper overflowing, or, as we would turn it into Latin, super- 
abounding. It is well to hold different words to their distinc- 
tiveness. Grace surges over any mountain, even of the most 
intelligible and law-defying increase of sin. " So that as the 
sin reigned in the death," still the idea of the very nature 
and subjective character of the reign, " so also the grace 
would reign." '' Would,'' vvo\, ''might'' (E. V.). He is still 
speaking of the result (see 4 : 18), for the two clauses should 
balance each other. ** Through righteousness." That ends 
the chapter. That fills this epistle. That is the key-thought 
of all these sentences together. Faith is the seed-germ of 
our glory. We are made righteous by our faith. Not that it 
is so very righteous, but that it is the dawning of a new moral 
nature. It is the richest act of human obedience. No won- 
der that it was reckoned for righteousness ; and no wonder 
that Paul, in these grand comparisons, when he came to speak 
of its results, should speak of it as a " reign," and as a 
" reign " of ''grace," and as a " reign " of "grace " " through 
righteousness ;'* that is, the very substance of the "grace" 
being that " righteousness " which is itself " eternal life by 
Jesus Christ our Lord." 



CHAPTER VI. 

1. What shall we say then? May we continue in sin, 
and the grace be the greater ? By no means. As men who 
died to sin, how shall we yet live therein ? 

"Then." The illative idea here is, that inasmuch as 
" where sin grew to be more, grace did overflow the further 
(5 : 20), the query might be worth answering: "May we 
continue in sin, and the grace be the greater? " 

There are four of these queries, and they entirely engross 



172 ROMANS. 

this and the next chapter. It will brighten our track if we 
recite them at once. This first ends with the idea, " Ye are 
not under law but under grace'' (6: 14). The second takes 
that point up. " What then ? May we sin because we are 
not under law but under grace .? " (v. 15). A reply to this, 
sweeping on through the rest of this chapter and through 
six verses of the seventh, ends with the expression, 
" We have been brought to nothing as to the law, having 
died to that in which we were held'' This breeds very 
naturally the third query: '* What shall we say then 2 Is the 
law sin V In treating this he utters the third provocative, 
and is ready for the fourth question. The law is not sin, he 
argues ; nevertheless ''^ I had been alive" (that means I would 
have quitted sin) ^^ at any time" but for the law (7 : 9). Sin, 
taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me and by 
it slew me, yet ^^ the commandment is holy and righteous and 
good." That, of course, leaves one more query to be listened 
to : " Did then that which is good become death unto me ? " 
(7 : 13). One-eighth of the epistle, therefore (chaps, vi. and 
vii.) is occupied with these four successively self-suggested 
interrogations. 

'' May we continue ? " Authority, as among the various 
readings, lies with the subjunctive. The contingency ex- 
pressed by that mood may be of any nature, and " may," can, or 
shall may be supplied. Either would do in the present instance ; 
but " may " is perhaps the best. If " where sin abounded 
grace did much more abound {^. V., 5 : 20), may we" avail of 
such an abounding, and sin the more, to increase the overflow 
of the graciousness. Paul replies, — not that this would be 
shameful, and not that this would be unlikely, and not that this 
would be an enterprise in which we ought not as Christians to 
engage. All that would be true but weak. The apostle's 
position is that the thing would be impossible. " May we con- 
tinue in sin " with a certain result ? It is idle for Winer to say 
that iva always means intention. Paul is full of the opposite in 
this very epistle (4 : 18 ; 6 : 6 ; 8 : 4). And how is it in the 



CHAPTER VI. 173 

epistle to the Galatians ? " So that (<va) ye cannot do the 
things that ye would " (Gal. 5 : 17). Paul's argument, there- 
fore, is, May we do a certain thing with a certain result ? And 
he replies on the spot, not that we ought not, but that we can- 
not ; and his single reason is, " As men who died to sin, how 
shall we yet live therein ? ' ' 

'* As men who.'' This is but giving the proper force to 
olTLveq. ^^ Died to sin." The meaning of the apostle in this 
whole verse has much light shed upon it by the surrounding 
passages. The verb is in the aorist, and the noun is in the 
dative case. The verb has nothing to relieve it from the idea 
that the persons intended " ^/^^" (aorist) on a certain occa- 
sion ; and the noun is in such a form (dative) as might mean, 
in common instances, the substance or essence of the death. 
Therefore a few (but a very few indeed) have translated the 
language, " Died i7i sin.'' " How shall we who died in sin live 
any longer therein ? " That glaringly would be absurd. Still 
fewer read, *' died for sin," and fancy we did so in the person 
of Christ ; but the mischief there is that Paul's demonstrative 
appeal would be lost. Those forensically safe might be just 
the persons to abuse their rescue. It is not difficult to centre 
upon one generally accepted sense. Nor need we quite reject 
the dative oi essence or niaterial (Jelf, Gram. §. 610). The very 
thing that *' ^/<?^ " is ^^ sin." Recollect sin is a part of our 
moral nature. We may continue to live in taste, and live only 
the more keenly in mijid or knowledge. What the apostle says 
we died *' to " or '' as to " is that intimate thing within us, our 
sinfulness. Now this agrees with all the language of the 
apostle. A little further on we read that Christ '' died to sin " 
(v. 10), and that is cleaner cut in mental contemplation than 
our dying. Christ died utterly. He never sinned. But He 
was tempted shockingly. Sin for a third of a century was His 
desperate torment, and He writhed under it as the essence of 
His sacrifice. He was '' made sin for us " in ways which show 
why '^ sin" was written instead of ^^ sin offering." He was 
brought close to sin, as much as mortal could be without com- 



174 ROMANS. 

mitting it ; and, to stir the fires, God deserted Him often, and, 
bereft of His Godhead in such a measure as to make His 
temptation exquisite, it is perhaps this same apostle who paints 
Him as in " strong crying and tears unto Him who was able to 
save Him from death" (Heb. 5 : 7). So that we are at no loss 
to know when He " died to sin " (v, 10). But we, alas ! like 
our righteousness (Is. 64 : 6), and like our holiness (Acts 3 : 
12), and like our cleanness (Jo. 15 : 3), had but a meagre 
dying. Yet we '^ diedj" and we ^' died once," giving the full 
force to the aorist ; and that we are saying so with reason 
comes out with more force in the following chapter. There 
we are said to be *' dead to the law " (E. V., 7 : 4). And the 
death happened on a certain occasion ; for the verb is in the 
aorist ; and it happened to a part (so to speak) of ourselves, 
for the noun is in the dative. It happened to " the law" Law 
in a corresponding sense is as near to us as ^^sin" I had not 
known ^' sin " but for '' the law" I could not do " stn " but for 
" the law J " and that in the shape of conscience constitutional 
within us. 

It may be well to remark that Paul is chary of the speech 
that the law is dead. He does not hesitate in the speech that 
sin is dead. But when it comes to the law he remembers that 
it does any thing else but die even in the cross of the Redeemer. 
He delights in the expression that we die, that is to the law in 
its curse. And that moulds his handling of the incoming 
metaphor (7 : 12). Let us anticipate a little. In the English, 
" man " in the first verse (7:1) and *' man " in the other verses 
seem the same. But in the Greek the women may be included 
under the word avdpuTzov in the first of the passage. Let us 
avoid " man " (E. V.), therefore. " Or are ye ignorant, brethren^ 
for I speak to persons knowing law, that the law rules its human 
subject as long as he lives." Now, the last word in this sentence 
is perhaps designedly ambiguous. Is it " he lives " or " it lives." 
There are scholars who say " // " (Origen, Erasmus, Bengel). 
If we say " //" it might seem to answer better, for Paul seems 
to be aimmg at the doctrine that the law is dead. But if we 
say ^'' he" it is more respectful to the law, for the law really 



CHAPTER VI. 175 

never dies, and Paul seems to shape his metaphor (vs. 2-4) so 
as to allow it to be said that the woman is " discharged'' (Re.), 
or is ^^ brought to nothing^'' or ^''becomes dead** to the law of her 
husband. Let us glance at the whole passage : " For the 
woman under marriage to a man has beefi bou?id to the living man 
as law (notice the dative), but if the man die she has been brought 
to fiothifig as to the law of the man. * * * ^S^ then^ my 
brethren, ye also have become dead as to the law by the body of 
Christ.** Instead of meaning that we are dead, which would 
spoil the comparison between man and wife, it means virtually 
that the law is dead as to us, or, availing of what is really in 
the idiom, that we are dead as to the law's constitutional claim, 
just as the woman might be said to be dead, though it were 
really the man, if she were said to be dead to the law of her 
husband, or, if you please, dead to her husband, if he were 
taken away by death ; and even our English Version seals all 
this, for it departs from the actual Greek (v. 6) by translating, 
— " that being dead wherein we were held** when the Revisionists 
adhere to the idiom, and come just to the side of " dead to sin " 
and ^*' dead to the law** for they say : '''•Now we have been dis- 
charged from the law, having died to that wherein we were holden, 
so that we serve in newness of spirit and not in oldness of the 
letter " (Re.). 

If the law, therefore, which is " the strength of sin " (i Cor. 
15 : 56), and which gives me over to my sinfulness, so that Paul 
cries out " I had been alive without the law at any time," could 
die, that is, could cease to curse me with my sinfulness, that 
would be my dying as to the most troublesome constitution of 
my history. On a certain occasion, therefore, we " died to law " 
(7 : 4), just as on the same occasion we " died to sin ** (6 : 2), 
and that this is the meaning of the apostle flows conspicuously 
from the surrounding passages. We '' died to sin** just as we 
^* lived to God ** (6 : 10, viatejHal dative). The God-part of our 
nature acquired life, just as the sin part of our nature began 
to perish ; and this, as we shall presently see, thoroughly agrees 
with the account of where we get that life (vs. 3, 4), and of how 
we got sin ^'■planted ** where it became stricken with decay. 



176 ROMANS. 

Now one sentence more, and weshallbe readyfor those next 
verses. "How?" The appeal is this. Not, ought we to con- 
tinue sinning, but can we ? The whole is dimmed by that mis- 
erable fact that we do continue sinning. Christ is the only man 
who " died to sin " entirely. He not only never sinned, but at 
a given date he shook off his horrible temptations. But how 
is it with us ? The apostle's argument is thoroughly achieved 
tantis pro tantis. Just so far as we " died to sin,'' it is impossible 
for us to live in it. And as we positively did die, and that at 
a certain date, and, moreover, in a way that promises a continued 
dying, Paul's argument is complete. Either we " died to sin '* 
in part, or not at all. If we " died to sin " at all, we have caught 
the true sight of it as the great Sinai curse, and at any 
rate cannot live in it, or else the premise is undone that it died 
within us. 

3. Or do ye not know that as many of us as were bap- 
tized into Christ Jesus, were baptized into His death ? 

"Or.'* This is a deft rhetoric. Paul quietly implies that 
they ought not to require this explanatory sequel. " Bo yo not 
know." They ought to know. Paul thus daintily expresses 
it that he comes to the heart of their own religion. " Bap- 
tized.'* Four theories are possible for this : First, that the 
rite was Paul's mere illustration (They had all been bap- 
tized. Now, what did that imply?) ; or, second, that bap- 
tism was the opus operatum, or, more, the means of their actual 
liberation ; or, thirdly, that it was but a pregnancy, like " cir- 
cumcision " (Col. 2: 11) expressing a whole change, or, 
fourthly, that it was this and the first thing all together : that 
Paul called conversion baptism in order to embrace in the 
word pregnant and telling elucidation. Ritualists might 
adopt the third, but the last is, of course, the most forceful 
and all comprehensive. " Baptized into Christ." Con- 
verted or new-born morally. "Were baptized into His 
death." Physical ^^ death" was one of the smallest parts of 
His undertaking. Christ's " death " began by His taking our 
nature at all. It was loaded with corruption. In spite of 



CHAPTER VI. 177 

His Godhead and of God shadowing Mary in His very con- 
ception, the man was born *' infirm " (Heb. 5:2); and though 
" separated {K^x^inciitvoq) from sinners " (Heb. 7 : 26), He had 
to be that very thing — '•^separated;'' and, having penalty to 
endure, I mean for His whole race, Himself and His people 
(Heb. 5 : 3 ; 7 : 27 ; 9 : 7), that penalty was horrid torment 
(Matt. 26 : 38), and that torment was awful tempting (Lu. 22 : 
44 ; Heb. 12 : 4), and that tempting must cover His race 
(Matt. 26 : 41 ; Heb. 2 : 10), that is to say, He had to endure 
a desertion by His Godhead which left Him barely sinless 
(Heb. 5:7; Matt. 27 : 46), and oppressed by awful snares, 
through which He cut His way in most fearful agony. This 
agony saved the world. *' It pleased the Lord to bruise 
Him " (Is. 53 : 10). He not only resisted sin by the help of 
His Godhead enough to carry Him along sinless, but enough 
to fight over again Adam's battle ; and, while Adam died in 
sin from a condition of righteousness. Himself to die *' to sin " 
from a condition of inherited "infirmity" (Heb. 5 : 2). This 
now is what our Saviour did. He fought through a terrible 
Struggle, and finally died to so much of self as tempted Him. 
Sin ceased to assail. And when those syllables floated over 
Jewry, " It is finished," this tenth verse was realized. He 
" died {aorist) to sin once,'' and never again had He a touch of 
this so-called " infirmity." 

Now the thought which the apostle builds upon, and which 
he assumes that the Romans ought to know, is that we share 
in that death. And He calls the history by which we become 
the sharers, baptism ; just as on another occasion he calls it 
confession (Rom. 10 : 10). It makes very little difference what 
he calls it. Only in calling it baptism he gives fine occasion 
for the picturesque. Just as baptism occurs and is over, so at 
a certain time (aorist) believers " were baptized into Christ." 
And Paul reminds them that they " were baptized into His 
death ; " that is, as His whole struggle ending in His being 
made perfect " (Heb. 5 : 9) is called His death, and involved 
the last agony of it, viz.. His dying " tmto sin,'' so they ^'■■werc 
baptized into" this very thing, that is, stripping the figure, they 



178 ROMANS. 

^^ died to sin" the momtnt they became united to Christ, and 
enjoyed in this way the benefit of His sorrow. 
Nothing more of difficulty remains. 

4. Therefore we were buried with Him by the baptism 
into the death ; 

These are all aorists. And the meaning now is quite 
intelligible. And our Baptist brethren believe that the figure 
becomes very close. We were actually *' buried," when con- 
verted, by a spiritual "baptism" into His " death^'' so as to 
share the deadening influence which He won against sin. 

4. That like as Christ was raised from among the dead by 
the glory of the Father, even so we also might walk in 
newness of life. 

"Raised from among the dead." We can no longer 
degrade this into mere bodily rising, any more than the death 
into mere physical dissolution. ^'- From among the dead" Was 
He not one of us ? Peter calls Him a man " who had been 
given over to death {davarudelg) according to the flesh " (that is 
in respect to what His flesh would have made Him but for 
His Godhead), " but quickened by the Spirit " (i Pet. 3 : 18). 
Paul says we are " quickened together with Christ " (Eph. 
2 : 5). He repeats this many and many a time (Col. 2 : 13 ; 
Rom. 8:11, see comment.). There must be meaning in it. 
Christ is called " the first begotten from among the dead " 
(U TO)v vEKpuv) ; and though there is no real difference between 
dying to sin and living to God^ and one is but explanatory of 
the other, yet they are very joyful explanations. Just as " we 
were buried with (Christ) by the baptisin ijtto the death" so, at 
the same moment, we were ''raised" with Him by '' the bap- 
tisjn " into a better "• life." 

Now, what made Christ win ? First, His Godhead, in giv- 
ing dignity and price-availing value to what He paid for His 
people ; and, second. His Godhead, again, in giving Him 
^' power. He was ''determined upon as the Son of God in 
power " (i : 4). His courage would have snapped like a silly 
reed but for the presence of His Godhead. " It spake 



CHAPTER VI, 179 

roughly to Him, and said strange things to Him " ( Gen. 
42 : 7), yet it stood by Him to the last. It never did really 
'■^forsake " Him, even in the last agonies of that bloody cru- 
cifixion (Matt. 27 : 46). It not only sustained Him, but it 
enlightened Him, poured " glory '* into His mind. Just as 
the gospel saves by a moral revelation which Paul calls " the 
righteousness of God'' being ^'■revealed'' (i : 17), so the 
^^ glory'' of God being revealed to Him, saved Christ. And, 
therefore, in two ways, by dignity and by moral illuniination^ 
that is by two forms of grace, forensic and effectualy in court 
and in the man Himself ^ our text is answered to and Christ is 
*' raised from among the dead by the glory of the Father." 

Let it be understood that Paul presses his argument. This 
is not the iva of intention^ but the Iva of result (see Com. 6:1). 
He does not mean if '* baptized into " Him we have the privilege 
of rising with Him, but what he means by " baptism " is our 
actually doing it. May we continue in sin and grace grow 
greater ? Impossible. How shall we who have actually lost sin 
(of course he means in measure) go on with it besides ? 

The next verse is even more positive. Christ " was raised 
(entirely) from among the dead." We are not quite so fortunate 
as that, but still " raised" already, so as to " walk in newness 
of life." 

5 . For if we have been bred in with Him in the likeness of 
His death, on the contrary also we shall belong to His resur- 
rection ; 6. Knowing this that our old man was crucified 
with Him, so that the body of sin should be destroyed, that 
we should no longer serve sin. 

We '■''Were baptized (aorist) into Christ" at a given time, 
viz., when we were converted and partook in that way of the 
benefits of His dying. But we " have been bred in with 
Him." The apostle lapses into the perfect. He speaks of a 
"likeness." We were "■ baptized" not into the ''likeness " of 
death, but into His very dying. But " we have been bred in 
with " (Christ) variously, and perhaps on that account He 
changes into the perfect. We " have been bred in with " (Christ) 
in being bred at all, for our horrible curse He participated in 



i8o ROMANS. 

by His descent from Adam. We were bred in with Christ, and 
that in a nobler way, when we were converted, and if that 
were all, it might be put in the aorist. But, again, and more 
perhaps in the mind of the apostle, we have been bred in with 
Christ into His horrible temptations. This was the essence of 
His " deaths And as long as the word '' likeness " is employed 
here, the portrait fits. Christ's sufferings were entire, and we 
were baptized into them (when we repented) as our complete 
redemption ; and yet Paul speaks of filling up '^ that which is 
behind of the afflictions of Christ " (Col. i : 24). Perhaps this 
word " likeness " is as good a solvent for such a sentence as we 
could possibly employ. In respect of ransom we are baptized 
entirely into another man's death, and He is our entire deliv- 
erance, but in respect of discipline, we die in the likeness of 
His death. " Our old man was crucified with Him." When 
He was nailed to the cross we were. Not only were we nailed 
there in the shape of a court deliverance, but our old man was 
nailed there, so that when we became " bred in with Christ,'* 
our crucifixion should begin, and we should begin to writhe 
and agonize and wrestle with our iniquity. " So that the body 
of sin should be destroyed." We read elsewhere of ^^ the 
flesh of sin " (8 : 3), very properly translated ^* sinful flesh '" 
(E. v.). These verses bring the whole subject before us. 
Crucifixion is not death. On the contrary, it is horrible, 
feverish, agonizing life. *' They that are Christ's have crucified 
the flesh " (Gal. 5 : 24). And Paul means just that here. We 
are infinitely far from having destroyed it. But we are 
destroying it. And Paul's argument is just this. Sin being 
our original curse ; and Christ having borne it ; and having 
borne it not by succumbing under it, but in having been tor- 
mented by it in horrible temptations, we are baptized into Him 
in two respects, one final in having been bought off by grace, 
and one daily, being " bred in with Him in the likeness of His 
death," that is, nailed to a perpetual cross, and, like " the 
Captain of our salvation," made " perfect by suffering." 

*^ Bred in with.'' The word is from ^vw, not from (jyvreio. 
"On the contrary." We are to give aUd its force. Death, 



CHAPTER VL i8i 

where it consists in torture, is very different from life when 
the victory is achieved. "Belong to." ^^ Shall be also of* 
(E. V.) would be much nicer. The difficulty is that it is 
ambiguous. *' If bred in the likeness of His death, we shall 
be also of His resurrection " (E. V.) would be the literal Greek ; 
but it would inevitably read as though it meant ^'"we shall be 
^r^^, (5^(:.," whereas it is the *'<^^"of independent assertion. 
" We shall be of His resurrection." We translate it, therefore, 
" belong.'* "Resurrection;" of course out of ^' death,"' the 
wider and the darker death, viz., our sinfulness. And here 
consists the argument of the apostle. If we are baptized into 
His death, we actually die, that is die to sin. " Our old man 
has been actually crucified." " So that." Again it is 
resultant, and not i7itentional (see v. i). " The body of sin " 
has actually been destroyed, " that we no longer serve sin." 
And though the apostle can not always be saying that this is 
only partial, and that crucifixion does not kill at once, yet he 
reminds us that it kills all the time. And the gist of his argu- 
ment is that we can not make grace abound by the perpetra- 
tion of that which grace, if it exists at all, makes us hate and 
fight and be crucified to at the very time. 

7. For he who died has been made righteous from sin." 

We should suppose that this meant Christ, if it did not say, 
•* with Christ " instead of ^^ with Him " in the next passage. 
We must understand, therefore, a general proposition ; and in 
that event it means any man, and, of course, Christ as well as 
His people. "He who died " (aorist) ; that is, who has put 
death behind him as a thing that has actually been achieved 
and finished. To patter about physical death, and to say that 
the apostle argues that a dead man is out of the reach of law, 
is contemptible. To think of a man stopping to say that in a 
discussion grim with spiritual dying ! The very commentators 
who say it, believe (wrongfully no doubt) that a man passes by 
death at once into the hands of the law. We trifle by such 
interpretations. But all sense here is given by the aorist. 
Let a man have actually died, so that the great spiritual catas- 



i82 ROMANS. 

trophe can be put into the aorist form, and be entire in the 
past, and ''^ he dieth no more'' Paul presently uses that lan- 
guage (v. 9). Yl^'''- has been raised (aorist) from among the 
dead.'* The curse has burned out. And as this same passage 
expresses it, " Death hath no more dominion over him." 

Now let us make this very plain. " The wages of sin is 
death " (Rom. 6 : 23), or, as all men agree, the original and 
only denunciation was, " In the day thou eatest thereof thou 
shalt surely die." This is the only curse, and so exclusively 
one, that if death could cease, that is if sin, which is death, 
could burn out in the soul, that second thing would stop, viz., 
eternal torment. This all men would admit. And the misery 
is, that sin will not cease, but feeds upon what it practices, 
and men grow worse in iniquity, and that by the law of God, 
and by the law of their own nature. If a man could die and 
get into the aorist, that is get it to be in some way the fact 
that he had endured spiritual dissolution, and actually 
exhausted it, and run it out as a spiritual penalty, then, 
according to our passage, he would be " made righteous 
from sin ; *' but David, in a badly translated psalm, says that 
this is impossible. Let us render the simple Hebrew : " None 
of them can, by any means, redeem a brother, nor give to 
God a ransom for him, and a precious payment for their soul, 
and then cease forever, so that he still live forever, and do not 
see corruption " (Ps. 49: 7-9). This is an unnoticed text, and 
holds that, for one's self or for one's neighbor or brother, no 
man can buy off guilt' so as to finish and cease, and thereafter 
then still live forever, and not see corruption. 

Now, what no sinner could do (that is die in the aorist tense, 
and get it finished) Christ did. He " finished transgression, 
and made an end of sin " (Dan. 9 : 24). And what we have 
said half figuratively. He made almost literal in fiery tempta- 
tion. He actually burned out His weakness. He endured 
innocently fearful pangs which bought us off before the law ; 
and He endured, practically, fiery battles, by which he was 
" made perfect, ' the Bible tells us, and by which at least He got 
the whole death behind Him, so that He at least answers to the 



CHAPTER VI 183 

Greek, ^^ He died to sin " (6 : 10), and to this neighbor passage, 
put in the form of something universal, " For he luho died has 
been 7?iade righteous from sin.'' 

And we see, too, at this stage how Christ may be said to be 
^^ made righteous y He never was made wicked. And yet He 
is said to be ^'sanctified" (Jo. 10: 36), and to ''sanctify" 
Himself (Jo. 17 ; 19). We are told very early in the Bible 
that He was to be " saved " (Zech. 9 : 9), and He entreats that 
God may save Him (Heb. 5 : 7). Moreover, He was *' raised 
from among the dead'' (i Pet. i : 21), and in this respect, not 
in time, but in sequence, he was " the first begotten " (Rev. 
I : 5). That He should be said to be " inade righteous " is a 
light difficulty, after all these stronger expressions. If a man 
is tempted, and tempted to the very death, and so tempted in 
a peccable nature as to be said to " have infirmity " in the 
very language of the Holy Ghost, then to cease all this, and 
to become restfuUy and gloriously righteous, not painfully and 
strugglingly so, and to take His place, as we shall one day do, 
in the glories of a most spontaneous obedience, answers to all 
the expressions of our chapter. Such a man has " died to sin " 
finally and in the very letter, and such a man has been " mad^ 
righteous," no longer in the agonies of a perpetual fight, but 
as "being made perfect" (Heb. 5:9); as having *' learned 
obedience" (Heb. 5 : 8); as having "(entered) into glory" 
(Lu. 24 : 26), and as being, what we will one day be, delight- 
fully and without a fight, peacefully and by a new nature, 
obedient. 

Now, how could this be universal ? In a way altogether 
different. Christ could literally complement the Psalmist. He 
could redeem His own cursed humanity, and do literally as 
David asked : that is. He could pay the precious ransom, and 
^^ cease^ that is, in this God-like aorist sense, do the thing and 
finish it, and then do what the song boldly announces as 
impossible for any sinner, that is, " still live forever and never 
see corruption." And this is the way Christ puts it on the 
road to Emmaus : " Ought not Christ to have suffered, and to 
€nter into His glory " (Lu. 24 : 26). 



1 84 ROMANS. 

So he saved Himself (Zech. 9 : 9). And now Paul is busy 
with our share in this aorist ceasing. Christ broke the bars of 
the pit by bearing innocently the penalties of the law. We 
broke them when " we were bred in with " Christ. '' He who 
died has been made righteous from sin.'' Christ " died'* 
when He finished His sufferings; and we " ^/^^ " when we 
took a share in them ; that is, when we were grafted 
into Christ (6:5); when we were* circumcised (Col. 2 : 11) ; 
when we were baptized into His death {p '. 2>) \ when we 
believed (13 : 11) ; when we repented (Matt. 12 : 41) ; when 
we were washed in His blood (Rev. i : 5) ; when we took up 
His cross (Matt. 10 : 38) ; when we discerned His body (i Cor. 
II : 29) ; when we confessed Him before men (Matt. 10 : 32) ; 
or, when (abandoning all the rhetoric of the gospel), we 
turned from sin to holiness by the power of the Almighty 
asked for through Christ's redemption. 

It must not go unsaid how this text, which even King 
James' men are shy of in their indifferent translation (for 
dLKaidid never means to free, E. V.), sustains the doctrine of 
anti-Lutheran enrighteousment. 

8. But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall 
also live with Him, 9. Knowing that Christ, having been 
raised from among the dead, dies no more ; death no 
more has dominion over Him ; 10. For in that He died 
He died as to sin once, but in that He lives He lives as 
to God. 1 1 . Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be 
dead indeed as to sin, but alive as to God in Christ Jesus. 

We have shown that iva (vs. 4, 6) was a Iva of result, and 
that Paul was arguing, not what they ought to do, but 
what they did do if they were Christians. If they were 
baptized into Christ, they were baptized into His death, and if 
they died with Him, it did not only follow that they ought to 
live with Him, but that they actually did live with Him, else 
they did not die. He now goes further, and adds another 
round to his ladder by claiming that they believed all this. 
" May we continue in sin and grace grow the more ? By no 
means" (v. i), because ye yourselves, who might carelessly 



CHAPTER VI. 185 

titter such a speech, " believe " the opposite. For "If we died 
with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.'* 
Nay, ye know it, '' knowing that Christ, having been raised 
from among the dead," that is ^'from a?nong'' the spirit- 
ually ^^ dead'' by a wonderful battle, itself a horrid death, in 
which His Godhead enabled Him to continue sinless, "dies no 
more," that is, writhes no more in that frail and tempted 
nature ; but lives the victor, sin's awful snare no longer shut- 
ting him about. What He reached, therefore, we are reaching 
if ''we are bred in with Him " (v. 5). "In that He died He 
died as to sin once for all." We have explained all that. 
"In that He lives. He lives as to God." That is the 
same thing differently put. He that is dead to sin lives 
to God. Though this dative still deserves a thorough 
clearing up. It is the " dative of material.'' If a man '' died to 
sin " (aorist), there came a time when the sin-trait in his nature 
perished. In Christ's case this was complete. When He cried 
*' It is finished," it perished altogether. But it never was a 
-sin-trait of absolute sinfulness ; it was only horrible tempta- 
tion. Christ died to sin on losing that. But we died ''bred 
in with " Christ. Ours was actual sinfulness ; but alas ! it did 
not die : it was only crucified. Our sin was set a-dying. Yet 
that happened at a definite date (aorist), and was the harbin- 
ger of an entire sanctification. "In that He lives." Now this 
is the other statement. It will be noticed that we change the 
particle. If we say "He liveth unto God" (E. V. & Re.), 
it would seduce us as it does the other commentators. It 
does not mean that Christ lives to God in the sense of serving 
Him. That would be obvious, and would destroy the para- 
graph. Dying to sin means dying " as to " sin ; that is, the sin 
part of the man dying. Living to God must have some 
kindred sense, and therefore we translate living "as to" God. 
We die "as to" sin when sin dies, and we live "as to" God 
when God lives, that is when He is our life, or as Paul ex- 
presses it (Gal. 2 : 20), when it is not we that live, but He 
that lives within us. Paul then draws his inference, If this be 
so of Christ, and you were "bred in with Him," and what 



i86 ROMANS. 

happens to Him, not ought to happen, but actually does 
happen, cceteris paribus^ to yourselves ; and above all if ye 
"believe" this, and ^^ know'' this, then go on knowing and 
believing, or, as he expresses it, "Likewise reckon ye also 
yourselves to be dead indeed as to sin, but alive as to 
God in Christ Jesus." 

Paul's logic, however, does not forbid, but actually encour- 
ages entreaty. He does not relax an instant in the verses we 
have finished, but confines our minds to an iron sequence of 
results. '■^ He that died has been made righteous fi'om sin.'' It 
is impossible, so he argues, to be both alive and dead. And 
so of Christ. If He ^' died to sin " by force of the Godhead 
that is within Him, He lives to that Godhead, or, as we have 
expounded that dative, " as to " it, or in that essential essence 
of His life. All that is plain. If Christ be glorified. He can- 
not at the same time be tried. And we who are planted with 
Him meet with the same necessity. If we be dead to sin, we 
must necessarily live to something else. And if we are dead 
imperfectly, that explains our miserable stupidity of speech. 
Just so far as we are dead, just so far and no farther are we 
sinless. And continuing in sin in order to quicken grace, could 
only be a thought conceived of by men who had far too little 
grace, inasmuch as, if we have grace at all, the very essence 
of the gift is a shrinking and a deliverance from our sin. 

Paul, therefore, having finished one argument, stops a 
moment for entreaty. 

12. Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body in 
an obedience to its desires; 13. Nor through sin give 
over your members as weapons of unrighteousness ; but 
give yourselves over unto God, as though alive from 
among the dead, and youx members through God as 
weapons of righteousness. 14. For sin shall not have 
dominion over you; for ye are not under law but under 
grace. 

There are six things that must be kept in view all through 
this epistle : First, that the great curse of sin is sinfulness. 
This we have a strange liking to forget ; and in every nation 



CHAPTER VL 187 

torment and the rougher consequences of the Fall come up 
before men as their perdition. Second, it is the law that 
works this sinfulness. I mean by that it is the law that gives 
us over to our sins. Nothing can be more revealed. It was 
the original threat, Eat and thou shalt die. Paul continues it 
in a maxim, " The wages of sin is death ; " and in a philoso- 
phy, " The strength of sin is the law ;" and in an inspired con- 
viction, " I had been alive without the law at any time." We 
cannot be too rooted in this in understanding the epistle. 
This is why our own righteousness is insisted upon by Paul ; 
for our being made righteous in the shape of faith is the begin- 
ning of our whole grace and hope and final glory in the 
Redeemer. Men think it safe to praise Christ as our whole 
righteousness in court, but it is Paul's way to praise Him for 
our ransom, and to build on that our own righteousness through 
the gospel. Third, it is the law that has to be satisfied, and 
when the law is satisfied, we cease to be sinful. Fourth, it is 
satisfied by Christ. It is satisfied, as Paul declares, by that 
life of agony which Paul calls His death. And it is satisfied 
for us when we are baptized into His death, that is " bred in 
with Him" into His sufferings, and become entitled thereby 
to our share of His blessed redemption. Fifth, this is what is 
meant by our not being under law (v. 14) ; and, sixth, our 
redemption (Eph. 4 : 30) is so imperfect, I mean in its results, 
and our pardon and our enrighteousment so incomplete, that 
we are sinners to be reasoned with, as well as saints to be 
divinely comforted ; so that Paul turns from the argument that 
he that died to sin cannot live in it, to remind us that, though 
we died to sin, still we are living in it, and to imply that we 
were only crucified with Christ ; that so far as the cross has 
worked, we are dead to sin ; but that in immense degrees it 
has not worked ; that this is the demand for the exhortation 
(v. 12), and that, like the inspired apostle, we are to carry 
about " in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life 
also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body " (2 Cor. 4 : 
10). These relations of " the law " are the staple on the part 
gf the apostle of this, and also of the following chapter. 



i88 ROMANS. 



"Reign;" either, first, in taking entire possession, or, 
Second, in capturing the will. In neither of these respects 
can the Christian admit sin. Sin cannot " reign,'' for he is 
crushing it, and he cannot be wilful in his wickedness, for 
that is utterly inconsistent with his warfare with it. " In your 
mortal body." Sin is altogether privative. Of course it is 
so, or whence the command ? The sole command of the 
Almighty is "Thou shalt love" (Matt. 22 : 37). We need not 
pause upon this. There are really two affections, but this 
does not disturb their nature. Paul boldly declares the emo- 
tional nature of our duty, and challenges any rival. He serves 
up half the decalogue, and with a wave of the hand says, " If 
there be any other commandment ; " and then most authorita- 
tively puts it in the declaration, " Love is the fulfilling of the 
law." Hence the "^^^ " is the throne of "j-/;?." If there be 
not conscience enough in our dead nature, that is, not love 
enough, other appetites take possession. Hence it is wrong 
to say " lusts " (E. V. & Re.). The apostle's word is " desires." 
It is the simplest Greek for that innocent affection. It is no 
harm to desire money. All the appetites of the body are inno- 
cent impulses of our nature. The ^^ flesh " which Paul con- 
stantly condemns, is all of our constitution as men, outside of 
the Holy Ghost. Let a man have the most exquisite tastes, 
they are of the ^^ flesh " according to Paul. And these fleshly 
" desires " are our sins. What else could they be according to 
Paul? " What I do I know not'' he says in another chapter 
(7 : 15). And how could he know it ? Knowing my sin when 
it consists in a want, would be like knowing holiness in meas- 
ures that exceed my conscience. Like the neck of a man 
whose sinews have been cut on the right, the crookedness 
occurs on the left. ''''Desire" pulls over the sinner. And 
what would be innocent, balanced by virtue, grow monstrous 
when, in the absence of love, they become the great exercises 
of our sinfulness, and hot tumors in the soul. 

Now these principles take up all the language presented in 
our Greek. '■^ Let not sin reign in your mortal body." Here is 
an animal whose glory lay in a love now lost. Wrecks of it 



CHAPTER VI. 189 

remain, but decaying hourly. He is damned if he cannot 
recover it. As, in a wild herd, the strong oxen trample the 
weak, so a thousand other affections eat out the heart of this 
one. We can supply what is needed in the parable. Ours is 
a " mortal body ^" dying in every sense, and sure to die physically 
whether we are redeemed or not. Paul points his finger at it 
as a seat of our ^^ desires.'' And having expounded how its 
*^ desires" become our sins by deadening and trampling better 
affections, he gives us this simple direction, " Let not sin, there- 
fore., reign in your mortal body in an obedience to its 
desires," that is, this body's ^'desires'' {avrov). "Nor 
through sin ; " (the " dative of material : " see a little fur- 
ther on, "through God" {ji^Qzco^f, ^'sin' being the efficient 
power in one case, and ^^ God'' in the other); "give over 
your members as weapons of unrighteousness ; but give 
yourselves over unto God as though alive from among the 
dead, and your members through God as weapons of 
righteousness." 

These quite unnoticed expressions, giving over our members 
as weapons of unrighteousness '' through sin^" and giving over 
our members as weapons of righteousness '■''through God," are 
vastly explanatory of the whole system of the apostle. The 
very thing that gives us over is " si?t" and the very thing that 
gives us over savingly is " God." Each is the '' dative of 
material " {rvdiiapria and Tcodec)). We encounter the exact coun- 
terpart in another epistle : *' Mighty through God " (E. V., 
TuOeco). ''The weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, 
but mighty through God " (2 Cor. 10 : 4). And while the other 
part of the present sentence has ru Oeu in the more usual dative 
sense and is properly translated ^^give over to God," it is sad that 
this part should be so translated. As the J>ower in the Corinthi- 
ans is nothing less than God, so the " righteous7iess " in the pres- 
ent verse, or the giving over, for that is itself the " righteous- 
ness" is as much " God" within us as the other is ^'- sin " within 
us, and the realizing of this is a great point in the whole epistle.* 

* It is a dative without a preposition that is found in i Cor. 15 : 10 : — 
'■ By the grace of God (jCo-pi-rC) I am what I am." 



I90 ROMANS. 

" Weapons^'' not " instruments " (E. V. and Re.). " Weapons " 
is the commoner meaning, and we retain it because there is a 
military cast which the apostle evidently intends. " The wages 
of sin are death " (6 : 23), that is, the " rations " or " military 
pay!' ^^ Sin'' fights desperately, and gets pay in '^ death'' 
And in another chapter Paul describes the conflict. " / see 
another law in my members warring^ etc." (7 : 23). The shame, 
therefore, that Paul cries out against in the Christian is that 
he should ^^ give over" his ''^weapons" to the foe, instead of 
giving over himself to God, and, through that Great Friend, 
his " members as weapons of righteousness." 

Now follows another of those cavil-provoking sayings of the 
apostle : — " For sin shall not have dominion over you, for 
ye are not under law but under grace." 

15. What then ? May we sin, because we are not under 
law, but under grace ? 

This cavil is strong simply by a mistake. It is the all-per- 
vading blunder, which is ever crowding in, that hell is a place 
of pain, instead of a place of both sin and pain. It seems 
impossible to realize that the law is responsible for the con- 
tinuance of sin an hour ; for, though we sinned, if the law 
denounced only pain, pain enough for that one sin would soon 
expiate it (Prov. 19 : 19 ; see Author's Com.), and life r«0e«, 
that is " through God" would return at once. This epistle to 
the Romans is finely calculated to make us believe that sin is 
given up to sin (i : 24, 26, 28), and that, hence, its strength is 
the law (i Cor. 15 : 56), and that, if the law is satisfied (aorist), 
it must be choked back in its demand, for our abandonment 
for sin is the prolific source of the eternity of our pains and 
sinning. Satisfy the law, as Christ has done, and let a sinner 
comply with the conditions of that sacrifice, and Paul's speech 
is as simple as a child's. Sin is a vile deceiving of me, and 
an enormous curse ; but, as long as law rules, I will remain a 
sinner. I am a slave, as Paul calls me. But in this grand 
discussion of redemption, it is this very point that he attacks : — 



CHAPTER VI. 191 

** Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not U7ider law 
but under graced Had he said, " Pain shall not have dominion 
over you," the cavil might have had some sense. Deliver me 
from pain, and I may sin without it. But Paul not only con- 
nects sin with pain, and not only makes sin the darker element 
of perdition, and not only makes perdition eternal, both pain 
and sin, but he makes sin the precursor of our agonies. He 
does indeed make Eve's sin prelude our own, as the precursor 
of our sorrow, but he makes our own sin travel before our 
sufferings. He teaches that plainly : — *' The sting of death is 
sin " (i Cor. 15 : 56). And, therefore, personal righteousness 
is the boon of the apostle, and personal sinfulness is our grand 
perdition. It is easy, therefore, to expound him. " May we 
sin because we are not under law?" Why, horrid! 
Being " under law " means being under ^^ sin.'' 

16. Know you not that to whatsoever ye give yourselves 
over to obey as slaves, slaves ye are to whatsoever ye 
obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto 
righteousness ? 

Being "not under law," cannot possibly show itself but in 
the relaxing of the law-hold by the diminishing of our sin- 
fulness. To say, Let us sin " because we are not under law^' 
is to say, Let us weave straws in our hair because we are no 
longer insane. Nay, it is worse than that, for that might be a 
mere glad freak, but to obey from the heart (v, 17) the 
great precepts of the Redeemer, is the essential "fruit" 
(vs. 21, 22) of not being '■^ under the law,'' and as he cannot 
obey from the heart, who is seeking excuses not to obey at all, 
the apostle means his logic to be actually entire. We are 
" under law," or we are not. If we are *' U7ider law " we will 
^^ sin," for the law demands that ^^ sin" shall be given up to 
^^ sin." If we are ^^ not under law," the words have no mean- 
ing unless we have diminished sin, for the law does not ordain 
the lash, but the lash and sinfulness ; and if sinfulness 
^^ reigns" we are just mocking ourselves by the thought of our 
deliverance. 



192 ROMANS. 

17. But thanks be to God that ye were slaves of sin- 
That is, that that condition of things is past — 
17— but obeyed from the heart the form of teaching to 
which ye were given over. 

Men are not machines, or Paul would have said enough; 
but men are free agents. Men are not carried into sin, so 
that they are forced into sin, without their agency, but they 
die willingly ; that is, their death, which is their sinfulness, is 
a thing of choice. So of ^^lawj" when we are ^^ not under 
laWj' we are not raised like an idiot, or as we may hope an 
idiot may be, immediately back to life, but we must struggle for 
it. The power is rc^deu (vs. lo, ii), but it is not given ex vi^ 
but in rousing our will. It is not ridiculous in the apostle to 
say, that, to a dead certainty, we once '• died to sin " (v, 2) ; 
and yet to exhort us eagerly not to live in it (v. 12). 

Moreover our death was imperfect. Our death will not be 
really perfect till the time Christ's was, viz., when He phys- 
ically died. He had not ^^ died to sin'* (v. 10) till His tempta- 
tions ceased, and we " died to sin " when we were converted, 
and have been dying ever since, and shall not be really dead 
till we rise in judgment. Hence Paul calls sin, ''sin unto 
death'' (v. 16), that is, the sinner's increase in sinfulness ; and 
^'■obedience'* an "obedience unto righteousness j" that is, an im- 
perfect "obedience" which is leading gradually to perfect 
righteousness. Now he tells us that it is an obedience to a 
" form of teaching," and we understand his language at 
once. It is not a perfect righteousness, but it is an " obedience 
of faith" (i : 5 ; 16 : 26); that is, a compliance with those 
commands of the Redeemer which slowly lead us on to a "^tx^ 
i^zX." righteousness." 

Hence now another gem of the epistle ! 

18. But having been made free ftom sin, ye were made 
slaves to righteousness 19. (Humanly speaking) on ac- 
count of the weakness of your flesh. — 

This is very graphic ! Paul is to end this passage by shout- 
ing out, " O, wretched man that 1 am ! Who shall deliver me 
out of the body of this death ? " (Re., 7 : 24). And if this sort 



CHAPTER VI. 193 

of ruin survives even in the Christian, we can easily understand 
what is meant by being " slaves to righteousness.'* We are 
" not under law : " that is certain : and we " died to sin ; " that, 
actually, and in an aorist past, occurred ; and '' si/i shall not have 
domi?iion over us," for we were "made free" from the law of 
sin and death. But all these things have happened inchoately, 
as with every grace. And, therefore, Paul insists that we are 
** slaves (speaking humanly)," and that we must take up a 
daily cross, and welcome chastisement in our struggle with 
iniquity. 

It is this complicated condition of our case that gives covert 
for cavil. If w^e *' died to sin " outright, or if we were squarely 
out from ^^ ufider law," then ^^ may we si?!?" (v. 15), or can 
^^we continue in si?i?" (v. i), would be preposterous; and 
the argument against it, that the law's great curse was sin, 
and we are out from under it, and that we died the death in 
every respect of sin, would show slavery to sin in the very face 
of it to be impossible. But the misery is, we are sinning, and, 
what is worse, we are doing nothing but sin ; our being made 
righteous is a thing inchoate ; and, therefore, we have to dig 
down into the apostle's argumentation, and make all these 
reserves. **A11 that is born of God overcometh the world " 
(i Jo. 5:4). " (We) cannot sin because (we are) born of 
God " (i Jo. 4 : 9). We " died to sift,'' and " we are not under 
law" Nevertheless we are yet but ^^ slaves to righteousness^* 
because of '' the weakness of [our) flesh." We have not " over- 
come the world ; " we have not " died to sin," and we are not 
out from under the law, in results inwardly achieved, except 
in that small beginning which we have of piety. 

19.— For as ye gave over your members as slaves to un- 
cleanness, and. to opposition to law unto still greater 
opposition to law, so now give over your members as 
slaves to righteousness unto sanctification. 20. For when 
ye were slaves of sin ye were free to be righteous. 21. 
What fruit had ye then of those things of which ye are 
now ashamed ? for the end of those things is death. 

Here is a wonderful solution ! Scarce a clearer thing occurs 



194 ROMANS, 

in Scripture. The lost are sinners, and the saved are sinners. 
The lost are free, and the saved are free. They are "free to 
be righteous "—the lost and the saved. This is a most im- 
portant dictum of the apostle. The angels are free to sin, 
and so is the Almighty. We ought to nurse this light, and 
blazon it abroad. We lost it in a mediaeval age, and theology 
still looks askance at our full freedom. Unless a soul were 
^'■free to be righteous^'' it could not possibly be wicked. But 
now Paul, rising to the height of our need, tells us a certain 
something that solves all the difficulty. The wicked are free 
to sin, and they sin more and more, making themselves slaves 
to sin, so as to be nursed into greater and greater opposition 
to the law. So the righteous sin, being free to do it ; and they 
sin shamefully, and confuse us, in the way we mention, as to 
the eminent difference. But Paul states that difference, and 
states it on the other side. Men are ^^ free to be righteous^ 
But alas ! alas ! they never use that freedom. This is the 
curse of the law. All are ^'■free to be righteous** but " death** 
which the law brought, means a depravity of will. Men never 
wish to be righteous, and never will be, without the grace of 
the Almighty. And when Paul says, ** Ye are not under laWy 
but under grace** (v. 14), he means this very thing — that we 
got grace to have a better will. This is what is meant by 
being freed from sin. It means freed from an engrossing will 
to sin. And this is what is meant by being " enslaved to right- 
eousness** not joyfully perfect in it, for that would not be 
^^ humanly speaking** nor would it be to be ^^ enslaved** But 
Paul states just the condition of the Christian ; free to sin, and 
shamefully given to sin ; ^^ free to be righteous** and earnestly 
trying to be righteous, and succeeding this far, that while the 
ungodly sinner, equally free, could be asked " What fruit had 
ye " (by your liberty to be righteous) ? What single result did 
it give you in all " those things of which you are now ashamed** ? 
the Christian can triumph in the words that follow : 

22. But now, having been made free from sin, but hav- 
ing been enslaved to God, ye have your fruit unto sanc- 
tiflcation, but the end eternal life. 



CHAPTER VI. 195 

** Having been made free &om sin;" but wretchedly 
little ; just as we are sanctified but little (8 : 23), and cleansed 
but little (Is. 64 : 6), and quickened but in the very least degree 
(i Cor. 3 : i),and with faith but as a grain of mustard-seed, we 
are "enslaved to God;" alas ! how hard the bondage some- 
times (Matt. 10 : 38 ; 16 : 24 ; Rom. 7 : 24), but we "have 
(our) fruit unto sanctifieation," the lost not using their 
liberty to be righteous, and therefore having no fruit at all 
(Ps. I : 4), but we having our fruit unto sanctifieation, and at 
last, when the work is completed, perfectness and " eternal 
life." 

" For," says the apostle, presenting the whole at a glance — 

23. For the wages of sin is death, but the grace of God 
is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

But now let us go back (vs. 18-23) ^"^^ attend to some main 
particulars. ^^ Having been tnade free from sin*' (y. i2>). The 
English cannot give directly the second aorist participle. 
Our versions often change it into what is more direct ; as for 
example ^'- which was made " (i : 3, E. V.). Sometimes '^ when " 
is used (Acts 2 : 37), and we might say in the present instance 
*' when we were made free from sin.'' The simpler choice however 
is probably the best, not " being made free from sin " (E. V. and 
Re.), but, using such past as we have, " having been made free'* 
*'Ve were made slaves" (aorist), and the thing was done at a 
certain time. And Paul immediately places that act in its 
proper relation. ^^ I say a human thing" or still more literally 
transmuted, **/ speak of what is human." Men have con- 
founded this with Paul in other places, — " / speak after the 
manner of men" (E. V. & Re. ; i Cor. 15 : 32 ; Gal. 3 : 15). 
This Greek is not that Greek at all. This Greek occurs but 
once. It means "/ describe what is distinctly a human con- 
dition." Nothing could be more express. A man is converted. 
At that aorist moment he is " made free." Alas ! what freeing ! 
And at that same moment he is joined to another master. 
Alas ! what a condition of obedience ! And, therefore, Paul 
says, **/ speak of what is human" and calls it a slavery to right' 



196 ROMANS. 

eousness^ a very good word for such a service which is unwilling" 
and half-hearted. He says, " Ye were made slaves to righteous- 
ness on account of the weakness of your flesh; " and, in the next 
chapter, facts come out in respect to the natural man (vs. 14-24) 
which show where a Christian begins ; what he started out of 
in. his original conversion ; how the word slavery is good for 
the sinner as well as the saved, he being enslaved to sin 
(vs. 14, 23, 24) against many a better judgment ; and how the 
Christian does not answer to this next chapter of the apostle, 
because he is not ^^ carnal, sold under sin,'' but how he does 
answer to it in his desperate fight ; how he has to spur himself 
even into common duties ; and how being a slave seeming to 
be too harsh a condition to so good a mistress, is too flattering 
a state for him, inasmuch as he is not even a patient slave, and 
performs in the very slenderest amount the duty that belongs 
to ^'■righteousness.'" 

Nevertheless he tries ; and this expounds the other passages. 
The sinner does not try. And, therefore, though he is '''free 
to be righteous " (v. 20), (for if the apostle meant ^^ from right- 
eousness " (E. V.) he would have said so; and why did he leave 
oTrd off in this critical region of his writing ?), though he is 
^^free in regard of righteousness " (Re.), yet he struggles fitfully 
at times, but never uses his liberty. He struggles sufficiently 
against sin to illustrate Paul where he declares that he is a 
slave to it ; and yet he submits to sin sufficiently to increase 
its power, and to grow in '■'■ opposition to (the) law (of the 
Almighty)." ''For as ye gave over your members as slaves to 
uhcleanness, and to opposition to law unto still greater opposition 
to law, so now'* It is really hard to keep up with Paul in the 
way he packs his ideas. Not only is the Christian a slave to 
righteousness, sweet as that mistress is, but he has to be stirred 
up to induce him at all to submit to bondage. Indeed this is 
God's great method to coerce his "slaves." Such is the curse 
of sin that, though its victim is free to be righteous, and 
though, what is more touching yet, he is a slave to uncleanness, 
and a thousand times struggles and resists his bondage, yet 
Paul can even taunt him with his utter want of will : — Where 



CHAPTER VI. 



197 



did you ever gain any thing against the enemy ? " What fruit 
did ye ever have of those things of which ye are now ashamed! " 
But here, in the depths of his own forlorn bondage, the 
Christian gains something. He is but a " s/ave to righteousness," 
and yet has the dim beginning of hfe, and, therefore, the faint 
upheaval of a better will. This is all that he has received of 
ransom, and all that he has yet achieved of his eternal living. 
This saves him. Paul calls it his ^^ fruit unto sanctification " 
(v. 22), and expounds it carefully. The sinner, however 
unwillingly (see next chapter), gives over his members as 
slaves to uncleanness, with the result of constantly increasing 
uncleanness, and the saint, however churlishly, gives over his 
members as slaves to righteousness, with the result of con- 
stantly increasing righteousness, the indulgence in ^^ sin'' 
ending in " death,'' and the struggle for " righteousness " ending 
in ^^ life in Christ Jesus our Lord." ^^Sanctification" (Re.), 
therefore, is the very hinge of the sentence. King James 
ought not to have said ^'holiness" (E. V.), and it is almost 
unpardonable in the nineteenth verse. 'Ayiaa/idg never means 
holiness,* but that rising out of sin which is the gift of the 
Redeemer. It is bad enough to say, " Ye have your fruit u7tto 
holiness ;" but it quite dislocates the thought in the verse I 
mention. There '' unto sanctification " (Re.) balances the sen- 
tence unto further lawlessness. But " righteousness unto holiness '* 
(E. V.) is miserable ; where is the difference ? As the slave 
of sin repines over it, but indulges it unto further wickedness, 
so the slave to righteousness writhes under it in horrid cruci- 
fixion and pain, nevertheless in churlish feebleness obeys, and 
by that feeble stirring of the Spirit gathers strength and passes 

* It occurs but ten times in N. T. Greek. Five of those times (i Cor. 
I : 30 ; I Thess. 4:3, 4 ; 2 Thess. 2:13; i Pet. r : 2) it is translated 
" sanctification " (E. V.), and " sanctification " (E. V.) nowhere else occurs. 
The other five times it is translated " Aotiness" (E. V.), and always unhap- 
pily (6 : 19, 22 ; I Thess. 4:7; i Tim. 2 : 15 ; Heb. 12 : 14), especially 
in Heb. 12 : 14, where it is much more appropriate to say, " sanctification, 
without which no man shall see the Lord. " 



198 ROMANS. 

through that great wonder-work of Calvary, his " being made 

righteous,'* or his " sanctification.'' 



CHAPTER VII. 

1. Or are ye ignorant, brethren (for I speak to persons 
knowing law), that the law, rules its human subject as 
long as he lives. 

The "or" (Re.), which our English Version treats as an 
interrogative, and therefore, determines to remove, is not only- 
significant, but really has a very wide significance on the part 
of the apostle. It swings him back into the previous chapter. 
For closeness of reasoning he had taken one thing for granted, 
and now he resumes it, that very peculiar thing, that sin 
breeds sin, or, to express it in legal phrase, that "the law," 
as its very chiefest threatening, gives us over to sin, or makes 
its ''wages death'' (see last verse); "Or, are ye ignorant" 
(Re.) he says ("for I speak to" Romans, "persons" who 
of all others on the earth pride themselves in understanding 
" law " ), " that the law rules its human subject as long as 
he lives?" This alternative chance, viz., that they did not 
know, warrants him in going back and speaking in more ful- 
ness. The like use of " or " occurs in the previous chapter 
(v. 3). " The law rules its human subject as long as it lives y* 
we were disposed to say. The Greek admits the *' it," and 
the after verses might seem to demand it. We have already 
seen, however, how Paul might not like to say that the law 
was dead. ''Do we then bring law to nothing V he had in- 
quired (3 : 31), "nay, but we establish law." We will see how 
he manages this under the coming metaphor. Meanwhile 
"its human subject," a rendering that may seem forlorn, is put 
instead of the racier Saxon, simply " man" [Yj. Y . &i "R.Q.)y 
to avoid excluding the " woman," who is really the point of 
the figure, and to distinguish dv^pwTroc (v. i) from hvrjp (vs. 2, 3), 
avdfjGjTTog being not necessarily of any sex, and av^p representing 
the law, and being he as to whom the woman dying, "has 
Jjeen brought to nothing as to the law " of her husband. 



CHAPTER VII. 199 

2. For the woman who is under marriage to a man has 
been bound to the living man as law ; but if the man die, 
she has been brought to nothing as to the law of the man. 

It is impossible to translate very literally. Paul evidently 
wishes to mould the sentence and thereby to shape the meta- 
phor for the service of his thought. That we died (6 : 2) the 
moment we were converted, means any thing rather than that 
the law died. In the sacrifice and cruel death the law triumphed, 
and through eternity one jot of it shall not pass. And yet the 
figure of the wife seemed to demand that the law should be 
the husband, and that to set the sinner free the law should 
die. The apostle, in order to avoid that, shapes the allegory. 
Instead of pointing to the husband's death, he speaks of the 
wife, and he robs us of English clearness by using a verb 
which is a favorite in his epistles. It literally means to make 
a man idle. It comes frorn the words a and ipyov, which would 
signify without work. It is translated (E. V.) with vast variety 
(Lu. 13 : 7 ; Rom. 6:6; Eph. 2 : 15); often to make void, 
(Rom. 3 : 31), or to destroy (Rom. 6 : 6), or to bf-ing to naught 
(i Cor. I : 28), or to make of none effect (Rom. 3:3). It is 
translated just below, *' We are delivered from the law " (E. V.). 
We might say, '' Made dead from the law of the man-, " but that 
would clash with the more literal expression (v. 4). Paul 
evidently would say. If the husband dies, the woman dies, 
that is, to all law to that husband, and, therefore, we write, 
" brought to nothing," as the nearest English we can think 
of. Below we shall say, " brought to nothing in respect to law 
having died to that in which we were held'' (v. 6). It is the 
nearest to the Apostle's imagery. The law is infinitely far 
from dead, but we are dead to it. The husband was indeed 
dead, but Paul's illustration was, so was the wife. As to any 
claim of law, she was dead. And what a terrible claim the 
saint has died to if he repents, we read of further (vs. 8-10) in 
this same chapter. 

3. Then, therefore, the man living, she shall be called an 
adulteress if she become another man's ; but, if the man die 
she is &ee from the law, so as that the same woman is no 



200 ROMANS. 

adulteress though becoming another man's. 4. So like- 
wise ye, my brethren, were made dead to the law by the 
body of Christ, that ye should belong to another, even to 
Him who was raised from among the dead, that we might 
bring forth fruit unto God. 

4. "So." It is that word Karapyecd that has shaped the figure 
in the aim to convey the reasoning. The woman has been 
** brought to naughty The whole system under which she Hved 
has been broken up. So of the behever. The law is not dead, 
but gloriously triumphs. But he is dead. He has been "made 
dead to the law." And though it takes hold of him with 
vital warmth for the first time in his history, yet it is dead as 
to its claim. " The handwriting that was against him " has 
been taken out of the way ; and that handwriting, strange to 
say, plunged him in sinfulness. Here now comes the strong 
part of the chapter. The splendor of being dead to law is 
that it ceases to make us sinful ; and just how it does so Paul 
goes on to explain, with singular boldness of speech, and yet 
with singular guard upon so dangerous an argumentation. 

5. " For when we were in the flesh." Now just there let 
us pause to link this sentence with the other. The other had 
the expression, ** body of Christ." It is too obvious to be 
told that ^^ flesh " in the present sentence, and ^'body" in the 
other, are not literally what they seem. " J^/esh " in the 
writings of Paul includes a thousand tastes that are mental 
and refined, and sweeps in the whole man outside of the Spirit 
of God. The *' body of Christ " means similarly. It is all of 
Him except His Godhead. It is all of Him, just as in 
the instance of His people, except that, in their case, we 
keep out of the word their enlightened spiritual part, and 
in His case, that same part as seat and throne of His abso- 
lute Kingship and Deity. When He says, '' My flesh is meat 
indeed," He means infinitely far from the carbon and nitrogen 
of His frame, but His whole man's being as sacrificed for sin. 
Its very carnality, in a reverent sense, was the secret of His 
torment. When He said, " The Spirit truly is willing, but the 
flesh is weak," He indicated the office of the ^^body" in His 



CHAPTER VII. 20 J 

torment. It was not the crude muscle ; else He could have 
borne it. It was the whole weak man outside of the Spirit of 
His Godhead. We are saved by grace, and we are saved by 
God, and the God-facts in the case make Him our hope, and 
our sole dependence for our being made better. But we are 
saved by '' fleshy Without ''flesh " we could have no redemp- 
tion. All of Christ outside of His Spirit could be tempted, 
which God never could ; and through temptation could be 
tortured ; and through His torture could be a sacrifice ; and 
through the sacrifice could assert a price in it as of God ; all 
of which He could not do as God ; and all of which explains 
the language of our text. We are " (sanctified) by His blood " 
(Heb. 13 : 12). It is in these lights that we are to " (discern) 
the Lord's body" (i Cor. 11 : 29). His "flesh is meat indeed." 
And so in this present epistle, " JVe are made dead to the law 
by the body of Christ ^ 

"" Who was raised from among the dead." Paul keeps 
constantly in view that being " dead to the law " releases a man 
from sinfulness. We always are dreaming differently. The 
grief that fills our eye is guilt. The grief that fills Paul's eye 
is sin. This is a flaw among the Reformed. The great fact 
in this epistle is that to save us is to make us righteous, and 
to damn us is to leave us wicked ; and, therefore, we mar the 
great word out of the Greek (make righteous) , when we give it 
a forensic cast. Paul says " dead to the law," and means by 
that chiefly " dead" to that claim which gives us over to wicked- 
ness. We see his intensity of thought by the immediate 
rebound : dead to law, that we may live (Gal. 2 : 19) ; dead to 
the old husband, that we may bring forth to another (v. 4) ; 
dead to sin, that we may live to God (6 : 11). And here he 
rivets the sentence by drawing Christ into the scene. He 
never sinned, but was tempted to. He never yielded, but died 
ten thousand deaths as against the '' infirmities " that " com- 
passed him about." And while, if you look at all the com- 
mentaries, they will tell you that this rising ''from among the 
dead" was from the rock in the Garden, the whole passage 
shows that it means morally, not out of actual sin like us, but 



202 ROMANS, 

out of awful " death " (6 : 3), that horrible '* infirmity " which 
His Godhead enabled Him to fight, till He was made *' perfect 
by sufferings." 

5. For when we were in the flesh the sufferings of the 
sins which were by the law were made active in our mem- 
bers to bring forth fruit unto death. 6. But now we have 
been brought to nothing as to the law, having died as to 
that in which we were held, that we might serve in new- 
ness of spirit, and not in oldness of letter. 

This is to provoke the next cavil, and we see at a glance 
how strong it is. It says, almost in terms, that the law makes 
sins. And yet, like the sun, it only shines down. If a man 
sins, he is not stopped in his accursed being. He lives on. 
That is the first point. And how could it be otherwise ? But 
if he continues to sin, will sin breed holiness? Would that 
agree with any other system ? Nay, must not sin breed sin,„ 
and each act of trespass make a man worse ? Does not that 
agree with all the analogies of nature ? Then, in legal lan- 
guage, all that Paul has asserted is the result. Christ super- 
vened upon a stem of wickedness to graft Himself upon the 
root. " For when we were in the flesh ; " that is, when we 
had but a modicum of Spirit, answering to our common con- 
science, which even the devils have, and which is slowly wear- 
ing itself away — " the sufferings of the sins " — we have seen 
how Christ suffered. It is a fine stroke in Paul to talk of 
sins sufferings'' Christ's agonies were His temptations into 
sin. But Paul speaks at the close of the chapter (vs. 14, 24) 
of the agonies of every man. But these verses he brings in 
first. " The sufferings of the sins which were by the law.'' How 
natural the immediate challenge, "Is the law sin?" (v. 7).. 
Paul, under that, is to bring out most startling verities 
/vs. 8-1 1 ). '' The sufferings of the sins ivhich were by the law : " 
" Sins" therefore (past all duplicity of speech), to which Paul 
means to say that ^^ the law" g^iwe us over. "Were made 
active in our members." As in many another phase of 
anthropology, the bearing of the law upon sin is in two par- 
ticulars. We can illustrate it as in the work of Christ. Christ 



CHAPTER VII. 205 

saves us in two particulars. He saves us in court by ransom. 
He saves us in our souls themselves by a blest enrighteousment. 
So, correspondingly, in respect to sin, it is incurable in twO 
ways, though one is the consequence of the other. It is incura- 
ble in court, because the curse was ^'' death ^'' and it is incura- 
ble as a disease, in the way that we call helplessness. Now, 
the law, as the occasion of sin, is in like forms dual, (i) One 
of these forms he has considered ; but now (2) Paul approaches 
the other (see below vs. 7, 8). The law occasions sin (i) by 
actually punishing with it as a curse. That Paul has never 
doubted. He has said boldly, " The wages of sin is deaths 
He is to declare to the Corinthians, ^' The strength of sin is 
the law." And he has pictured our death to the law as mean- 
ing that we are '^ alive to God through Jesus Christ our lord'* 
Now he is provoking another challenge. " Made active'' This 
is a favorite passive (2 Cor. 4:12; Eph. 3 : 20 ; Col. i : 29). 
Our version loses its force in that respect. In that important 
clause, "Faith made active by love" (Gal. 5 : 6), blinking the 
passive ruins everything. 

Let us pause a moment upon this. If I say, " worketh by love" 
( E. v., see also Re.), I afford a text which has been propping 
a dangerous error. But if I say, '' made active by love," I 
put the love directly into the faith, and I bring out that which 
afforded the ancient definition that ^^ fides formata " has its 
differentia in charity. It is the pest of Protestantism that faith 
should be thought saving if it be mere dependence ; and it 
has come to pervade our church, and to loosen society, and 
(what casts shame upon Christ) to illuminate our jails and our 
gibbets, — that a man can get to Heaven by understanding the 
gospel, that is by having cut from it (it may be on the night 
preceding his execution) all thought of the necessity of re- 
pentance, and that he be told, that if he will cling to Christ on a 
personal understanding of His sacrifice, he will certainly be 
admitted to paradise. The verb means " to work^ to do^ to be 
active, especially of mental activity, Aorist " (Liddell). The 
middle is not to be taken for granted ; and the passive can 
not mean to ^^work." When Paul speaks of "comfort made 



204 ROMANS. 

active in enduring" (2 Cor. i : 6), he utters something much 
more clean-cut than " comfort that works in enduring." And 
so, " made active by love " puts the whole doctrine of faith 
into the exactest condition for the people. It must be a faith 
that has love in it, just as the atmosphere must have oxygen 
in it. And to put the faith first and love afterward, is to 
tempt the sinner to have the faith and never get the love, for 
as Jeremy Taylor urges, if we are justified by faith, and, once 
justified, must alway persevere, what is to keep the sinner from 
launching upon the Christ, and failing afterward in the 
imagined consequence ? We are " tnade righteous by faith " 
(Gal. 2 : 16). It is " reckoned {to us) as righteousness " (4 : 5, 
9). It is that ^^from " which the '' righteousness of God is man- 
ifested'' (i : 17). That is, the excellence of God must be re- 
flected in our souls (and what is that but love ?) before it can 
be handed on in a living way '■'■from faith to faith " ; because 
*'the righteous 77ian must live out of his faith'' (i : 17): faith 
must be the dawning of his life. And what does all this mean 
but that faith must be moral in its visions ; must in fact be a 
moral illumination, with a morally illuminated Christ ; very 
graphically, therefore, must be " jnadc active by love "; and very 
manifestly, therefore, does not belong to the felon, unless 
over night in his prison his "heart (has been) opened " (Acts. 
16 : 14), he has " received the love of the truth " (2 Thess. 2 : 
10), he has been regenerated in answer to prayer, and his 
whole moral being reached by being born again " (Jo. 3 : 3, 
E. V.) into a new sight of sin (Job. 42 : 6) and a moral view 
of the loveliness of his Redeemer ? All this is meant by " made 
active by love." 

We understand easily, therefore, the present expression, 
'■^were made active in our members." "To bring forth fruit 
unto death." ^^Sins which were by the law" that is, to which 
^' the law" gave us over, '■'■were made active in our members" 
and, as a consequence of every indulgence, made things worse 
— as Paul expresses it, fed "■death" that is, bore fj-uit to the 
increase of those shocking '* wages" which Paul calls *^ death." 
** But now," having died with Christ, that is having death 



CHAPTER VII. 205 

actually paid down and exhausted, which we, except in the God- 
man, could not have done, "we are brought to nothing as 
to (aTTo) the law, having died to that in which we were held." 
It was the husband that died, but the law was too vigorous 
to be subjected to such an emblem. Paul, therefore, remem- 
bers that the wife also was emptied out or made idle from the 
law of her husband ; and this is the phase he would press. 
^' We are brought to nothing as to law,'' that is, cursed with sin 
by it no longer. And the cause was in Christ, '' having died 
(with Him) to that i?! which we were held'' — that we might 
begin to cease from sin — that is, '' that we might serve in newness 
of spirit^ and not in oldness of letter." Paul ends with this. 
And we see in what compact shape he wedges in at the last a 
new idea. Not only have we " died to sin" but we have died 
to that form of the curse which gives us over to hypocritical 
sinning. Paul has discussed this in another chapter. " Not 
one who is so in what is apparent, is a Jew, nor is that which is 
so in what is apparent in the flesh, circumcision" (2 : 28). Paul 
leaves the subject so that our modern idolisms are equally 
put out of the way. " One who is so i7z what is hidden is a Jew." 
He goes at once to the seat in moral affections ; and then he 
uses an expression which applies to this day as well as to 
Paul's. *' Circumcision is of the heart ; in spirit, not in letter.*'' 
The true ^'■circumcision" of the soul, that is, conversion, is to 
be complied with not simply in the " letter." " If ye be cir- 
cumcised ; " that is, if ye be only circumcised in the outward 
or literal way, "Christ shall profit you nothing." And so in 
our day, if a man only believes, that is, reads the " letter " of 
the truth and believes it, and rests his soul upon it ; if that is 
all ; if he really leans upon Christ and clings to Him, and his 
chnging is personal and singularly exclusive, so that he is 
trusting to nothing but a personal Redeemer, still, if all he has 
reached is the letter ; if he understands soteriology perfectly ; 
if his view is complete of a personal sacrifice, in all respects 
but '^ what is hidden " (2 : 29), still if he does not know Christ, 
I mean in His loveliness, and if he does not hate sin, except 
in its dangerousness, he is no believer. How absurd to get to 



2o6 ROMANS. 

Heaven by mere believing things ! The expert theorist and 
the sharp mind, best capable of understanding the " letter," 
would be most convertible, and the reality is often the other 
way. Faith may be dim in the '■'■letter^'' if it be warm in the 
^^ spirit y And that now is the meaning of our text. The 
^^ law,'' if it withdraw its curse, delivers us over to a genuine 
conversion, which may be very weak, beginning only in a bud- 
ding and imperfect faith, but it will be a genuine faith, pos- 
sessed by the new-born Christian, and not by the idolatrous 
Israelite ; and therefore answering to the language, " that we 
may serve in newness of spirit, and not in oldness of letter." 

7. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? By no 
means. On the contrary, I had not known the sin but by 
law ; for, indeed, I had not understood the desire except 
the law had said, Thou shalt not desire. 

Paul had pushed his idea to the very verge of a mistake, and 
now, to clear his reasoning, he states what that mistake would 
be. He has allowed it to escape him that " sins " are "by the 
law" (v. 5). And, hence, to shield that which may easily be 
turned astray, he writes the quick question, "What shall we 
say then? Is the law sin?" and then brings forward the 
second (2) of the two forms in which law becomes the " start '* 
of iniquity (see also next verse). That form we must be very 
particular in describing. Not only does the law breed " sin " 
by inflicting it as a penalty (and by this we must be understood 
as meaning, abandoning the sinner to his sinfulness), but it 
breeds it in this way, — that " I had not known the sin but by 
law," on an expounding of which depends this whole passage. 
It does not mean that unless Sinai had spoken, and that in the 
Jewish sense, we could not sin. That we have already denied 
(5 : 13). It does not mean that unless our parents had 
taught us, or the letter had in some way been read of moral 
commandments, we could not transgress, for that again would 
be extreme ; all men have natural conscience (see i : 20). 
But the key is this conscience itself. Without law there can 
be no transgression. This we must press a Voutrance. Some 
goodness is needed for any sin. And to hold so perilous a 



CHAPTER VII. 207 

position, let me advance to the very edge. The devil cannot 
be impeached unless upon a basis of conscience. If he merely 
knows moral distinctions, as Paul would word it, " in the letter^'' 
that arch fiend may have traditions of sin, but cannot sin. He 
may hear that he is sinning, but that is not sufficient. He 
must feel sin ; that is, he must have wrecks of conscience ; 
and as conscience eternally decays, it keeps him at the top 
of the list as a never-ceasing transgressor. This is plainly 
Paul's doctrine (3 : 20 ; 4 : 15). And now he applies it in 
our texts. "/ had not known sin but by the law'* That is, I 
could not possibly sin without a conscience. This conscience 
must have its knowledge too. " I had not understood the 
desire, unless the law had said, Thou shalt not desire." 
A new-born infant has conscience, but what light can it show ? 
Some teaching comes with every condition. The whole mul- 
titude at the bar will hear one sentence, " Out of thine own 
mouth will I judge thee " (Lu. 19 : 22). And this teaches the 
second (2) form (see Com. v. 5), in which law begets iniquity. 
We must notice, in passing, two varieties of speech. Paul 
says in the first clause, "/^«/," and in the second clause, ^'' the 
laWy* and we have already virtually explained it. ^^I had not 
known the sin but by law j " that is by law oecumenical, that law 
which all men possess. Again, "/ had not understood the desire 
unless the law had said, Thou shalt not desire.'' Nor can we ex- 
plain this quite as well as when we have considered another 
distinction. He says in the first clause '•^ known," and in the 
second clause '-^understood'' We learn from Liddell that there 
is a real difference, nvoxr/cw means to know a thing (direct), 
and ol6a means to know (something) about a thing. Paul 
marks this difference. We know " sin " much more directly 
than we know that ^^ desire" is ^^ sin." Indeed '•^ sin" is 
^^ sin " in esse, but ^^ desire" is ^^ sin " only because it acts out 
or exercises its want of something better. To understand about 
desire is necessary, for some law must tell us "'Thou shalt not 
desire." And, therefore, it is wrong to vary the expression 
and say "lust" (E. V.), and particularly wrong to vary that 
subsequently, and say "covet" (E. V.). The wrong thing in 



2o8 ROMANS, 

the sinner is to want love. That Paul everywhere teaches 
(13 : 8, 10 ; I Cor. 13), Loves of other sorts, though they be 
of the most refined, are wicked, because they indulge and 
practically exercise this deficiency. The devil, who has prac- 
tically some love left, or is unready at least for some measures 
of deficiency, ^^ knows'' what deficiency is, for he has to strug- 
gle and resist measures of it which are still enticing him. And 
he understands about " desire,'' for he knows that it is innocent 
in itself, and that in Gabriel or himself a " desire " of power is 
only circumstantially and consequentially a wickedness. It 
spoils things to say, " T/iou shalt not covet," for both the 
Hebrew and the Greek (Ex. 20 : 17) have the same more inno- 
cent expression. The force of the passage is seen in this very 
innocence. Paul simply quotes the LXX, and implies that men 
would have been slow to understand, unless the decalogue had 
made them faniiliar with so simple and harmless an apparition. 

8. But sin, taking a start through the commandment, 
achieved in me all desire ; for without law sin is dead. 

Here it is again! "law" instead of ''the law" (E. V. & 
Re.). Paul's speech is the strictest possible. To say ''the law,'* 
and to imagine the commandments given to Israel, is to wreck 
all law and all possible morality. Paul is trampling that„.very 
thing. Men sin back to Eden. But no law, no transgression. 
Therefore men had a law ; and that law in its root was con- 
science. Ten thousand Sinais could make no law without it. 
And this Paul is seizing upon. *^Sin, taking a start through 
the commandment." This word haunts all philosophies 
(atpopuirv, a starting point : it is not any common word, " occasion,'* 
E. V. & Re., as in Gen. 43 : 18). Men, worrying over the abstruse- 
nesses of Ethics, like to say that benevolence starts us ; or, puz- 
zled with psychology, admit that there occur deeper develop- 
ments, but that sensation is the " start." Paul presses the idea 
that if there be no conscience, there can be no sin ; that sin, 
therefore, takes its "start " from conscience ; that conscience is 
the necessary and deepest inscription of " law "\ that on a capa- 
city that conscience gives, sin achieves the wickedness of its 



CHAPTER VII. 209 

desires ; and that, come what will in the way of consequence, 
the very thing by which we know sin, viz., conscience, is 
necessary to its being committed ; for, boldest of all, unless a 
man have law, and that not in the letter only but in the spirit so 
far as concerns a common spirit or a moral sense, he cannot 
commit iniquity, or, as the apostle expresses it, "sin is dead.'* 

9. And I had been alive without the law at any time; 
but the commandment coming in, sin got its life and I 
died; 10. And the commandment which was to be unto 
life, was found for me in its very self to be unto death. 
1 1 . For sin, taking a start by the commandment, deceived 
me and by it slew me. 12. So that the law is holy and the 
commandment holy and just and good. 

Ae may be translated "and" when it begins both of two 
adversative sentences. The '' but " of verse eighth answers for 
verse ninth in their common contrariety to verse seventh. "I 
had been alive without the law at any time." Paul sweeps 
on to another ending. Here he has gathered back both influ- 
ences of law. (i.) The law curses me with sinfulness. If there 
were no law, the curse would be remitted. Again, (2.) the law 
curses me with knowledge. If there were no law, I could not 
be a sinner. " / had been alive without the law at any time." 
The word is Trore, and means ^^ once'' (E. V. & Re.) only deri- 
vatively and with lesser claim. " But the commandment com- 
ing in ; " that is, coming into the case ; " the commandment 
comi?ig in " as a thing to be considered, " sin got its life, and 
I died." In the universe of God no man perishes without a 
conscience. " The commandment which was to be unto 
life ; " and by this is meant, that conscience is the very rudi- 
ment and root of life : " Was found for me in its very self to 
be unto death. For sin, taking a start by the command- 
ment" (How could sin set out at all if I had no conscience?), 
"deceived me, and by it slew me "(sin having this advantage, 
that if it enters but for once, then the law is on its side, and 
gives me over to sinfulness). And as law is the very expres- 
sion of my conscience, and I could not sin without a con- 
science, and I could not be holy except in conscience, and the 



2IO ROMANS. 

only possibilities of Heaven must be in the light to which the 
conscience will attain, I must end with the apostle's paradox, 
that it is by the commandment that (2) sin deceives me, and 
by the law that (,i) it takes my spiritual life, but that, for all 
that, I must agree with the apostle, that conscience has no 
fault but that it is not strong enough, and that the law has no 
fault but that it has not hold enough upon my being, but that 
on the contrary, as Paul concludes it, "The law is holy and 
the cominandment holy and just and good." 

I approached this rendering with fear, because no one has 
been found to suggest it, why, I cannot imagine. Hork cer- 
tainly means "a/ any time'' (Eph. 5 : 29 : see Robinson), 
and other renderings are open to doubt because of their endless 
variety. " When the commandment came " (E. V, & Re.) cannot 
mean upon Horeb, for that would imply that men were 
*^ alive" and spiritually safe and perfect in the earlier stages of 
the world. The flood then must have swept men for being in- 
nocent. But then, just as mad has been another reading. 
Watts has embalmed it for the use of the church. 

" I was alive without the law, 

And thought my sins were dead. 

" My hopes of Heaven were firm and bright, 
But, since the precept came, 
With a convincing power and light, 
I find how vile I am." 

The idea is that we were alive in our own imagination. But 
the startling result would be that when we ceased to be alive, 
or when by the grace of the Almighty, we opened our eyes, we 
" died.'' We turn the verse into utter absurdity. Dying does 
mean living, and that in the near text of the apostle (6 : 3, 4), 
but nothing of that sort just now. " The commandment ordained 
tolifCy I found to be unto death " (E. V.) ; and expository of this 
form of dying are some of the strongest texts in the Bible. " " Sin 
deceived me, and by it slew me " (v. 11). It wrought "death in 
me by that whic?i is good" (v. 13). And then, to sum up all, 
comes a sentence which should have corrected all our mistakes 
in respect to this important passage, — " For we know that the 



CHAPTER VII. 211 

law is spiritual^ but I am fleshly ^ sold under sin " (v. 14). Paul, 
with very little preface, then leaps to the conclusion, '•'■so that'' 
(and his view is less than usually laid open), I, not having 
*^ known sin but by the law,'' and the law furnishing only the 
starting point for transgression ; its seat being in the heart ; 
and its voice the very voice of the Almighty ; all worlds 
being happy only by this very law ; we might as well impute 
sin to God as to trace it to His seat in the conscience. Paul 
has glanced through these things enough to prompt us ; and, 
meaning to make his conclusion the occasion for another 
reply, he ends this one more suddenly : — " So that the law is 
holy and the commandment holy and just and good'' 

13. Did then that which is good become death unto me ? 
By no means ; but that which is sin, with the result of its 
appearing sin, working out in me death through that which 
is good, with the result that that which is sin, through the 
commandment, should become exceeding sinful. 

We cannot clarify the idea of Paul. His postulates are ob- 
vious, (i.) We would not remain sinners but for the law ; for 
" a wise son makes a glad father " (Prov. 15 : 20), and our great 
Father, in his love, would not have a bad son unless the very 
key stone of law were " death " as a punishment for transgres- 
sion. And again, (2.) we could not remain sinners unless we 
knew the law. For unless conscience survived, in however 
failing a condition, even Lucifer could not trespass. " The 
law is holy." But even the holiness of law is necessary to pos- 
sibility in sin. To kill a man we must have a man to kill. 
And before I can cry out, " I have sinned against Heaven and 
in Thy sight," I must see the Heaven that I offend, and know 
the law that I have broken by my miserable iniquity. 

The tallest sinners in the pit will be the intelligent possess- 
ors of the gospel. 

14. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am 
fleshly, sold under sin. 

All the words for being, except the most earthy, are derived 
ixova. breathing. It is so in the Hebrew. The word for life. 



212 ROMANS. 

is breath. And then there are stages in the figure. Another 
word is seized upon for soul. But it is still breath. And then 
when a finer is needed, still another vocable meaning breath is 
used to signify spirit. The Latin falls into the same habit ; 
and when we come to the Greek, -^vxh {breath), when worn out 
in its more general usage for the soul, needs some other ex- 
pression, and falls upon another expression for breath {irvevim), 
which means the moral soul, which is strengthened when we 
are converted, and which goes among all mankind by the name 
of conscience. Spirit, in the writings of Paul, usually means 
our conscience. It is opposed to the ''^fleshy' which takes for 
its meaning all the rest of our nature. A man may be an ex- 
quisite gentleman, but the finest things in his desires are of 
the ^''flesh,'' except as they are of the Holy Spirit. When Paul 
says, '' There is a psychical body and there is a spiritual body " 
(i Cor. 15 : 44), his meaning is simple. He means to say that the 
soul will dominate the earthly sinner, and the spirit the 
heavenly saint. He means to say that the soul has our natural 
light, and the spirit our moral intelligence ; and though he is 
far from making a duality of essence, any more than of the 
" old man " and the " new man," yet he carries it even to the 
body. We have a soul-body below, and a spirit-body (that is 
one harmonized to obey the conscience), which is to rise here- 
after into the Kingdom of the Father. 

The apostle here, therefore, is perfectly plain. "The law 
is spiritual." What is that but meaning that the law is 
moral ? And as the spirit is but the moral part of man, 
the law is solely meant for it. "I am fleshly." Paul is evi- 
dently speaking of his lost condition. For though he says in 
another place, ''Are ye not fleshly?" (i Cor. 3 : 4), there it 
abundantly appears of the fleshly remains of our state by 
nature. Here it is all the other way. It may not be for a 
moment doubted that Paul may think of the dark remains of 
his original wickedness, and when he speaks of '* evil (being) 
present with (him)" (v. 21), he may not put it away from his 
thought upon himself ; but that Paul is describing the lost 
and not the saved, or, if one likes it better, describing the " old 



CHAPTER VII. 213 

man " apart from the grace of salvation, the one clause, " sold 
under sin,'* triumphantly establishes. This one touch has 
split the passage for many an exegete. It has become a favor- 
ite resort to understand a sinner for eight verses (vs. 7-14), 
and a saint afterward. What a miserable recourse ! Paul 
never wavers a moment. He has spoken of the " sufferings of 
sins'' (v. 5). Now he is to unfold them. And leaving the ad- 
verse difficulties to the last, let us see how finely he depicts 
the impenitent transgressor. 

15. For what I work out I do not know; for not what 
I wish do I practice, but what I hate that do I. 

How could anything be more profound ? What is sin ? It 
is any emotion, innocent in itself, which is deficient in two 
higher affections. If I love my horse, and a sad neighbor 
needs my care, the care of my horse becomes my transgres- 
sion. If I love all innocent pleasures, and am spurred by the 
thought of them to all my enterprise in life, my whole life be- 
comes sin ; as is the whole actual reality, if the whole pleasure 
of life is not crowned by a love to the Almighty. Sin is priva- 
tive, therefore. How can I " know " privative deficiency ? 
If I knew sin, I would be righteous ; for the same light that 
reveals me Christ, reveals me wickedness. The Bible is full 
of that thought, and it is all summed up in the phrase, " This 
is life eternal, — to know Thee, the only true God " (Jo. 17 : 3), 

But, then, these three verbs as to doing (E. V.) or practic- 
ing (Re.) are all different expressions. The first means to 
"work out," and is applied to ''death " in this epistle (v. 13). 
The second means to " practice," and is said by Liddell to 
have to do with habit in sin. The third means to "do." Our 
version has erred in smothering the difference. 

We need not be so profound, therefore, after this correction. 
"What I work out I know not." How unspeakably true 
this must be. " Godly sorrow worketh repentance " (2 Cor. 
7: 10). "Tribulation worketh patience" (5 : 3). "Freed 
from sin, ye have your fruit unto holiness " (6 : 22). From the 
very nature of the change you " kno7u " these things when they 



214 ROMANS. 

happen. But let the change be the other way, and it settles 
noiselessly. A man may see by his bloated cheeks that he is 
becoming a drunkard, but who, in gentler circles of iniquity, 
feels the '■''death'' he is working out? (Job ^^d '. 13; Jer, 9 : 
6). This is the very easiest doctrine. Men do not hate God, 
and they do not love sin, I mean in its strictness as moral 
delinquency. They do not hate mercy and glorious purity of 
heart, and the thing would be impossible ; and we do 
harm when we say they do, for the Bible does not say so, and 
they themselves may justly deny it in their absolute conscious- 
ness. The Bible is altogether more prudent. " The fleshly 
mind is enmity to God " (8 : 7), but it gives a reason, and that 
reason is roundabout and indirect. "(Men) hate light, neither 
come to the light " (Jo. 3 : 20), but there is interposed at once 
derivative reasonings. A God infinitely perfect could no more 
be hated than a blue sky. And as to benevolence and nobility 
of act, how foolish that a man could hate them — except just 
in the sense of the apostle. " The fleshly mind is enmity to 
God, because it is not subject to the law of God " (8 : 7), and man 
" hates light, neither comes to the light," as Christ altogether 
explains when he adds the expression, " lest his deeds should be 
reproved'' (Jo. 3 : 20). It is the consequences of sin that men 
are dreading when they hate Jehovah. 

And as the Bible never says anything different from this, we 
may come boldly to the language of the apostle. " What I 
work out I do fiot k^w." It would be awful to me to destroy 
the noblest part^of my creation. What I practice, therefore, I 
do not wish. This is a common feeling with the impenitent. In 
fact it is universal. "What I hate, that I am doing.'* The 
imperial character of conscience, which, even in the pit, beck- 
ons a soul back from further death, makes sin a torment even 
to the wicked ; and thoroughly realizes the next verse : — 

16. But if I do that which I wish not, I consent unto the 
law that it is good. 

Now, why had I not better bring on at once the twenty-second 
verse, " / delight in the law of God after the inward man " 



CHAPTER VII. 215 

(E.V.) ? This has done all the mischief. Men, entering upon 
the study of the passage with the expression *' sold iinde?- sin " 
(v. 14), have said at once, it is Paul as an impenitent. But 
coming to this, "/ delight in the law of God,'' a whirlwind has 
sprung up. The attempts at harmony are curiosities for 
exegetes. The Greeks said it was a sinner. The moderns 
preponderate the other way. Some have split the passage 
as we have seen, and made Paul personate another in the 
midst of this most careful picture. And, therefore, with 
proper timidity in respect to the risk, we think the expression 
^* sold under sin" is a harder statement to neutralize than the 
rest, and therefore we take that as our cue for the integrity of 
the whole design. But where really is the difficulty in the 
twenty-second verse? The ^^ inward man'' \s not '^ the jiew 
man," on the contrary the ^^ inward man " in certain cases is 
itself to be renewed (E. V.). In fact the only other text ex- 
cept one (Eph. 3 : 16) in which like Greek appears, is this : 
" Yet the inward man is renewed day by day." It means sim- 
ply the conscience ; that part of a man that sends him to 
hell or to heaven. The Almighty asked, " Who hath put wisdom 
in the inward parts ? " (Job 38 : 36). There is in fact no 
word in the Bible that means the saved heart in contrast with 
the pneuma of the impenitent. The song says : " Their inward 
part is very wickedness " (Ps. 5:9); and, more to our purpose, 
" Thou desirest truth in the inward parts " (Ps. 51 : 6) ; the 
need of which another Psalm exemplifies, for it says, " They 
curse in their inward parts " (Ps. 62 : 4) ; and Jeremiah, look- 
ing to this cankered condition of the conscience, utters the 
covenant, *' I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it 
in their hearts " (Jer. 31 : 33); so that there is no difficulty at 
all in this part of the sentence. But "/ delight" — that is rather 
a strong experience ! For a thief, red with the blood of a mur- 
dered passenger, to depict his condition as one of *' delight in the 
law" of the Almighty, would seem to turn all reason out of doors. 
But let us look at that expression. The Greek has already said, 
"I consent to the law " (v. 16); that is "■ I talk with (or like) 
the law " (avficpTffii) ; and all those who split the passage into 



2i6 ROMANS. 

two will agree with me that that is telling of the impenitent. 
But how is this in essence but just the idea of the other, " / 
delight 171 the law of God J" if we go down to the naked vo- 
cable, " I sympathize — I have a pleasure in cominon with the law " 
of my Sovereign ? The tallest fiend in the pit, and that is Satan, 
if he had done some act not so subverting in its results as to 
breed him pain, and yet so noble as to touch cords that hell's 
degrees of sins had not yet ruined, might answer to this very 
word, ''/ have a pleasure with it" {owr^do/uai). Hell will have 
such recoils through all eternity ; or else its fires would cool, 
and they would begin to be unjust. 

But if these principles remain, they are the man m his no- 
blest part. The noblest part of the devil is his conscience. 
And in a certain distinguishable sense it is the imperial part. 
Could I stand up and say, would I be lost or saved ? or, 
going further inward and looking at the whole body of my 
iniquity, would I be a bad man or a good ? the devil himself 
impulsively might speak for righteousness. Paul's language, 
therefore, is not in the least too saintly. Let us look at it. 

17. But now it is no more I that work it out, but tlie sin 
that dwells in me. 

Who is this '* /.?" Our first impulse was to say, it is the 
conscience. In fact we prepared a page in which we insisted 
on conscience as the imperial part. As man was created for 
his conscience {-rrvevfia) ; as that is the beautiful machinery for 
which all else is but the case ; as our Saviour could only have 
been dealing with this when he said to Martha, there is but one 
thing needful ; and as this is what wakes up under conviction, 
and lacerates the sinner till he cries out, ^' O wretched man that 
I am,'' we thought it no risk to say that this ^^ inward man'' 
was the "/" intended in the text. But the speedy uprooting 
of any such idea explains the embroilment that has character- 
ized all the attempts upon the sense. We are close upon a pas- 
sage which says : " In me, that is in my flesh." God forbid 
that we should be confusing the Epistle by confounding the 
conscience with what is fleshly. But yet the " / " must be 



CHAPTER VII, 217 

cousin-german to the flesh in some shape or other, for what 
does the apostle say ? If " I live," it is " not I, but Christ " 
that " lives in me " (Gal. 2 : 20). It is plain, therefore, that 
it cannot be the pneuma or conscience part of a man, for what 
is the pneuma but Christ's part, and precisely that which does 
live when Christ comes to reign within us ? We do not won- 
der that the controversies on this part of Paul would fill a 
volume. And when we come to a fresh attempt, we are pushed 
back again. We are ready to say, yes, but it must be the 
pneuma, for what other part of a man could *' delight in the 
law ? " What but the conscience could talk with or for the 
law (avjucpTjjuiy V. 16) ? And what but the conscience could an- 
swer to the picture, " What I would, that do I not, but what I 
hate, that do /" (E. V., v. 15)? Just as we are thinking of sit- 
ting down in despair, this idea flashes : — Why not make the 
^'/"to be the impenitent sinner, just as he stands? How 
often are knots untied by tumbling back into just such literal- 
ness of meaning! Who can "/" more naturally be than 
«/?" Now who is "/.?" Paul, soul and body, flesh and 
■spirit, just as he stands, a ruined and ungodly sinner. This 
view rallies all the passages. " It is no more I that work it 
out;" for I desire life, and not death, and am hating the ruin 
of my spirit, and not nobility of character. And we would 
draw attention here to the introduction of the word "mind'* 
(vowf), which noiselessly takes the place of the pneuma in the 
twenty-third verse. The '' flesh " is the whole of a man out- 
side of the spirit. But it includes his nicest reasoning gift. 
The ^^ flesh " picks up facts from the ^^ spirit,'' and learns to es- 
timate them. Being linked in ungodly men with the remain- 
ders of a conscience, it learns to set a value carnally upon a 
noble life, and to shudder, more sometimes than a Christian, at 
rank enormities. Look simply at these things. Conscience is 
not a stranger. It is one aspect of intelligence. It is a sight 
of holiness, just as the same mind has a sight of beauty. How 
natural that it should pervade all my thought, and that the ver- 
d:ict of what is right should characterize all my thinking. 
And the universality of this "f?iind" (v. 23) appears in the 



21 8 ROMANS. 

very word " sin'* It means to miss the mark {aiiaprdviS). I have 
a mind to be happy, and I miss it. I would Uke to be noble, 
but this hking is not strong enough, because my conscience is 
decayed, and my flesh masters me, and I miss nobility of liv- 
ing. And this explains all the terms of the apostle. He tells 
me I am a slave : — " The law is spiritual^ but I am fleshly^ sold 
under sin " (v. 14). He tells me I am a dupe, and that ex- 
plains my being a slave (v. 11). "Deceived me, and by it 
slew me" (v. 11). And away back of Paul for twenty centu- 
ries the Bible reeks with this same idea. The escaped freed- 
man is one " Who does not lift up his soul unto vanity " 
(Ps. 24 : 4), that is, grasp a shadow when he is desiring happi- 
ness. " The heart is deceitful above all things," Jeremiah tells 
us (17 : 9); and that it is self-deceitfulness comes out in still 
bolder appeals. " My tongue deviseth evil," says the inspired 
Psalmist ; and that it is evil to the sinner's self appears in the 
illustration, for he says it is " like a sharp razor working 
deceitfully" (52 : 2). And the same Psalmist challenges this 
duped enslavement where he exclaims, *' How long will ye love 
lies ? " or, in the words of our Version, " How long will ye love 
vanity, and seek after leasing " (Ps. 4:2)? 

Let us understand the "/," therefore, as meaning the man 
in his impenitence, and then each verse will explain itself. 

18. For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells 
no good thing, for to will is present with me, but to work, 
out the good, not. 

Here already we have a need of our definition. **In me'* 
does not mean "in my flesh,** for we cannot harmonize the 
conscience without making the "/" include the conscience. 
But Paul has already said, "/ am fleshly'' (v. 14). How per- 
fect then is his consistency ! He does not doubt that he has 
a conscience, but he is constantly representing it as over-ruled 
and dying ; and therefore he has a right to his expression : 
"/« me^ that is^ in my flesh." "/" being over-ruled by ^'' my 
flesh" am predominantly '^fleshly" (v. 18); and though my 
conscience animates my *^ mind" (v. 23), and fills it with better 



CHAPTER VII. 219 

desires, yet it is deceived (v. i8) and enslaved (vs. 23, 24); for in 
" my flesh,'' the dominant part, " dwells no good thing, for 
(though) to will is present with me, (yet) to work out the 
good, not." ''I find'' {^vpicKi^, E. V.) seems to have Uttle MS. 
authority. The Revisers and most moderns omit it. *' Good," 
in the earUer part of the sentence, means virtue, perhaps from 
a root meaning to admire. " Good" in the latter part means 
the beautiful. In my flesh dwells no virtue, and, as that is my 
dominant part, my appreciation of the beautiful (morally), 
which is high, gets no opportunity of being trained or 
listened to. 

19. For the good which I would, I do not ; but the evil 
which I would not, that I practise. 

If a man really wishes to do a thing, he has done it, I mean 
in the region of morals. For to love an act or to desire it, if 
it is an act that can be done, insures that it will be done, and 
is in itself the virtuous part of it ; for as this same apostle has 
said, "love is the fulfilling of the law" (13 : 10). We must 
be careful, therefore, not to derange that first principle of 
morals. But to have our longings when the action is not just 
present, when it is in the future, when it is in the past, when it 
is in the distance, or when it is only in the fancy ; above all, 
when it is by itself, and is not swept from us by the over- 
ruling desires of the flesh, is the idea in the mind of Paul. 
We would like to do the kuUv {the beautiful), but we do not 
like to enough, and sin is just the tyranny of a superior affec- 
tion. 

20. But if I do that I would not, it is no more I that 
work it out, but the sin that dwells in me. 

To the onset of the question, now therefore. If the "I" 
be the man himself, and man is dominantly ^^ flesh," and 
^^ flesh " by its innocent desires becomes guilty in its desires 
when they become exaggerated by a deficiency of better, how 
can Paul say that it is not "/" that work the wickedness? 
We can give now some easy replications. "If I do that I 
would not." Paul's apparent paradox seems to justify itself 



220 ROMANS. 

by the will. Paul's idea seems to be that the weaker will 
may be more properly the man. For look at the attributes of 
it. In the first place it is the vaoxQ, general will. In the choice 
of the whole life together, who is there that would choose sin? 
In the second place, it is the future will. In all that broad 
expanse that reaches out in the eye of the present, all men are 
on the side of what is noble. Again it is the happy will. Paul 
speaks significantly of " the sufferings of sin.'' Again, it is the 
longing and aching will. Men feel that they are delinquent, 
and yearn after what is high and noble. These are the ideas 
of Paul. The whole cast of the chapter goes to show that 
that side of a man that has on it the conscience, deserves to be 
called more truly the *%" because that part stands to what it 
says, repents not of what it designs, and wills and hesitates 
now, even under the brow of sin, to confess the gyves that are 
fettering it away from its felicity. 

21. I find, then, the law, that when I would do good, 
evil is present with me; 22. For I am pleased with the 
law of God after the inward man. 

We discover by reading the commentaries that Protestants 
shrink from two things, first, from calling "the law" any- 
thing but the moral law, and, second, from imagining the con- 
science to have the same moral affection, and, when renewed, 
to be the same sanctified heart as belongs to the believer. 
The first of these mistakes has led to a peculiar pointing. 
Dr. Shedd translates the twenty-second verse with the comma 
after TTOieiv. He puts "good" in apposition to ^'- the law.'' And 
he gets rid of ^'' the law" as meaning anything else than the deca- 
logue, by reading thus : — ^'' I find then that to me wishing to exe- 
cute the law^ which is good., evil is present." The only pay for 
such a forced adhesion would be that we could carry it out. 
But how about the twenty-third verse, and the "law in the 
members," and " the law of the mind," and " the law of 
sin?" It was a bold place to attempt such a gloss, for these 
three come immediately after. How about " the law of the 
spirit of life., and the law of sin and of death ^ " (8 : 2). It is 



CHAPTER VII. 221 

plain that ^^ laiv " may mean a a state of facts, or a rule or order 
of realities. ^^ The law'' of an earthquake is the way it rup- 
tures the crust, or the direction in which it is seen to move. 
We might quote other passages (3 : 27). But when this ad- 
hesion to an exclusive sense attacks the second sentence of the 
two, it actually favors Pelagianism by the craze of the attack. 
Do listen to a commentator on this second verse (v. 22): 
"Conscience does not delight in holiness [awrjdonai, \ . 22); it 
only approves of it {avfi^rifiL, v. 16) . . . Such terms as Mlu 
and /^'<^^ are inapplicable to the conscience. Reason and con- 
science belong to the understanding, and not to the will ; they 
are cognitive, not voluntary ; perceptive, not affectionate ; 
legislative, not executive " (Shedd in loco). Let it be consid- 
ered that this is not the definition of a word, but of the furni- 
ture of a lost man's nature, and that we are invited to believe 
that a man may have conscience, but no sense in the sense of 
any moral emotion. How completely this plays, by recoil, into 
the hands of the Pelagians ! If this be orthodoxy, men will 
say, it is utterly accursed. How can I know holiness without 
emotion ? At this late day such things just sacrifice the truth. 
The whole of law is wrapped up in two emotions. Our Saviour 
teaches it (Matt. 22 : 40), How can I know beauty without 
feeling it ? And how can conscience move an inch in what Dr. 
Shedd calls approving holiness, if holiness be an emotion of 
love, unless it have that emotion ? and if it have it in a decay- 
ing and dying form (as Satan has), that is all we need afiirm to 
meet, in the orthodox sense of deficiency, the Pelagian view. A 
man is totally depraved when he has not enough conscience ; 
but a man is not depraved at all when he has no conscience. 
Total depravity does not consist in no moral emotion (least of 
all in the wrong sort, for there are not two sorts of morals), 
but it consists in a deficiency of it, and that deficiency must 
increase if we are not miraculously renewed. Renewal, there^ 
fore, must be of the conscience, or, as the Bible calls it, the 
regeneration of the heart. And sin's deficiency does not leave 
us without some love for virtue, but with too little ; and as sin 
itself is a loving too little (13 : 9, 10), this is our total 



22 2 ROMANS, 

depravity, for it affects every faculty, and every act and exer- 
cise that is possible to the heart. 

"The law" (v. 21). That means the state of the reality. 
" That with me wishing to do what is beautiful." The veriest 
sot has a conscience ; and that, by the very law of its nature, 
has the kingly office. Its voice, but for its deficiency, would 
be listened to ; and, in spite of its deficiency, I confess the 
splendor of loving, and the exalted excellence that resides in 
doing right. " I am pleased with the law " (aw^Jo/zaf, v. 22). 
Paul has already said, " I talk with the law " (v. 16), that is, I 
say the same things or assent to it. And what does being 
^^ pleased with'' it mean more? And as to the "inward 
man " we have treated that along with the whole sentence 
(see com. on v. 16). Paul prays that they might be " strength- 
ened with might by the Spirit in the inner man " (Eph. 3 : 16). 
It was thus that they were to be sanctified. And of that design 
is the exact gospel. Every sinner has an *^ inner man,'' and 
that inner man is not the self-sufficient conscience of the Pela- 
gian, which can remedy itself, but the fading conscience of the 
lost, the embers of which will endure eternally, but the light of 
which will continue to decrease, unless in this world brightened 
by the saving cross and by the saving power of the blessed 
Redeemer. 

23. But I see another law in my members warring 
against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity 
in the law of the sin which is in my members. 

Eagerness to comprehend all this under " the law " of the 
decalogue, if it were felt, might easily be indulged, for these 
orders of the facts or laws of the reality are all exacted by Sinai. 
" The law in my members," or, as it is afterwards called, 
"the law of the sin which is in my members," is really what 
was announced in Eden as its head anathema (Gen. 3 : 3), and 
" the law of my mind," namely that some wrecked conscience 
shall be left, is an essential part of it. Just this conflict that 
is described will be the curse upon lost sinners through infinite 
ages. 

" Mind." A new term. Paul drops the expression pneuma ; 



CHAPTER VII. 223 

for though the lost have that (viz., conscience), yet they have 
more than that (see com. v. 17). Paul pictures the whole oppo- 
sition to " death ; " and that opposition consists, not in the pres- 
ent emotion of conscience, but in that and all we have ever 
learned. T\\t. '^van^x knows too much to perish. And were it 
not for " the law of sin in (his) members^'' he would break out. 
He is in "captivity," therefore. He is in ''captivity in the 
law of sin." The preposition should be £v (see MSS.). The 
sinner is ''deceived'' (v. 11) ; at least he feels so when finally 
awakened ; and all through his history he carries with him a 
^^ mind'' which would have led him aright, containing more 
than a "heart" (2 : 5), because including with the conscience 
awful convictions of the truth, and fearful terrors in respect to 
perishing. 

24. O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me 
from the body of this death ? 

Of course this is all consistent. A sinner a hundred times 
cries out against his bondage. He finds "a law." And 
now the apostle hardens that into an actual " body " or organ- 
ized system. Nay, not quite so abstract : his a-ctusd " body " 
organized to sin. This expression has been traveling toward 
us. " The body of sin " had to be " destroyed" (E. V.), so we 
read in the sixth chapter (v. 6). Latterly we have been hear- 
ing of sin in our members (7 : 23), that is, the seat of the 
" desires of the flesh." And now we put it all together. There 
is an organized " body of death ; " and it is too strong for a 
decaying conscience ; and Paul, by crying out : 

25. But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our 
Iiord. 

finishes his picture ; only making the " death " the darker by 
showing that there is no hope of deliverance sav^. in "Jesus 
Christ our Lord." 

It is not very important to diagnose the next passage. It may 
be Paul proper, or it may be Paul in his natural state or " old 
man" just as in all the rest of the passage. It makes little 
difference. He had uttered the wailing cry, **Who shall de- 



2 24 ROMANS. 

liver me from the body of this death ? " and then suffered the 
sky to open with the only possible deliverance. After that 
the ending may be in his own person — or not. It makes never 
the smallest difterence. The expression "I myself" may 
mean that or not. The truth is the same in either case. 

25. So then I myself, in the mind, serve a law of God» 
but, in the flesh, a law of sin. 

The Christian does not climb higher than such a sentence ; 
so that " I myself," in this case, may mean a Christian. With 
Paul's "mind" he served "a law of God," just as the sin- 
ner does, and that to the extent that he starts back from 
greater reaches of iniquity ; with this difference, however, that 
if it be now at length the risen Paul (v. 25, first clause)^ he 
serves more, and is growing, rather than decaying, in his on- 
ward service. He is serving graciously in the one case, and 
feebly and decayingly in the other ; whereas, on the reverse 
side, both serve a law of sin, protestingly and strugglingly on 
the part of Paul, and protestingly and strugglingly on the other 
part, but with struggles, on this latter part, less in strength, 
and without any looking to the grace of the Redeemer. 

"/," therefore, is simply the impenitent man; and if it 
changes in this last verse, it is upon the indication of that ** / 
myself ^" and it is in a branch of the statement following the 
outburst about Christ (v. 25), and equally true with either 
meaning. 

"In the mind" and "in the flesh" are both datives 
without a preposition, and, therefore, indicate a closer connec- 
tion with the service than either kv (in ) or (Jm (by). The indi- 
cation is that both ^^ the mind'' and " the flesh " constitute in 
their emotions and conditions their respective service. We 
do not deny that the dative sometimes means the instrument 
(Jo. 21 : 8 ; I Cor. 9 : 7), but it is usually in physical matters, 
and very rarely in those texts which are dealing with pictures 
of the mind. 



CHAPTER VIII. 225 



CHAPTER VIII. 

1. There is, therefore, now no condemnation for them 
who are in Christ Jesus. 2. For the law of the Spirit of 
the life in Christ Jesus freed me from the law of the sin 
and the death. 3. For (a thing which the law could not 
do in that it was weak through the flesh), God, sending His 
own Son in likeness of sinful flesh, and on account of sin, 
ccftidemned the sin in the flesh, 4. With the result that 
the law's righteous-making be fulfilled in us, who walk 
not after flesh but after spirit. 

Paul lays a foundation for a phrase, and then confidently 
uses it ; or he uses a descriptive sentence in a thoroughly in- 
telligible way, and then suddenly condenses it to avoid re- 
peating his language. In fact in all Scripture, and in all 
secular speech, that course occurs ; so that the word " faith,'* 
for example, means more than mere mental belief, and the 
word "clean" (Jo. 15 : 3) and the word " righteous " mean 
actually not " righteous," but only beginning to be less sinful. 
Books would choke our dwelling houses if v/e could not 
shorten them by certain catch words, so to speak, which do 
not at all describe the plenary thought which they are to con- 
vey. " In Christ " has been long ago prepared for by the ex- 
pressions ^^ died with " Him, " crucified with Hi77i,'' '-''baptized into'* 
Him, and, above all, ^^ bred in with Him,'' so as to '■'live with 
Him " (6 : 3, 5, 6, 8), the meaning being that we so stand 
"zVz Christ^'' that forensically we are bought off, and spirit- 
ually we are " made righteous " by Him through His 
redemption. There is a strong minority of MSS. which 
add, " who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit '* 
(E. v., V. i) ; but, on the whole, it must be rejected. It is a 
perfect description of " them who are in Christ." "No con- 
demnation." The expression is very strong, both from the 
word and its position in the sentence. " For the law." Here 
comes again the language which turns us away from the law 
proper, or the decalogue, to the same word as meaning a state 



226 ROMANS. 

of the reality (see 7: 21-25). A"<^ y^^ when we come to 
reflect, "the law" is lurking in the neighborhood after all, 
and we need not be surprised that it starts up again in the next 
sentence (v. 3). Every law, either of grace or wickedness, 
was writ on Horeb. And, therefore, when it says, " The law of 
the Spirit of the life in Christ Jesus, freed me from the law 
of the sin and the death," it may indeed mean the order of 
the facts, or the rule of the reality, but what is that but the 
description of what was announced on Sinai ? *' The law of 
sin and death " was precisely that proclaimed in Eden, " In 
the day thou eatest thereof " (Gen. 2 : 17). And " the law of 
the Spirit of the life " is as forensic as the other. Both these 
laws must prevail, before Sinai, with all its thunderings, can be 
laid at rest. " The law of the Spirit of the life in Christ Jesus'* 
First, it is "/« Christy He alone won our deliverance. Sec- 
ond, it is a " life in Christ^ This is the form in which our de- 
liverance is achieved. Third, it is a " Spirit of life in Chiist** 
or, in other words, a moral conscience revivified by the Holy 
Ghost : in other words our being " made righteous " is our 
great salvation. And, fourth, it is a " law of the Spirit of the 
life; " and that there can be such a *' law " is itself a forensic 
reality, for it is a " law^' as the sentence proclaims, that sets 
me free from another *' law^'' viz., that dire rule that makes sin- 
ners sinners, that establishes me in sin, that makes sin an incur- 
able disease, that makes it grow and reign, that makes this the 
great Sinai curse, and that embodies it all under that terrible 
name, '^ the law of death.'' "Freed me "(aorist), that is, did it 
at a certain time : began to free me (for all these terms have 
the reserve of incipiency), ^^ from the law of the sin and the 
death " at the time of my conversion. 

3. " For." This is for the forthcoming reason for the freeing^ 
which the apostle has so definitely stated. "A thing which 
the law could not do ; " literally "the impossible thing 
(to advvaTov) of the law.'' In the next chapter the apostle 
speaks of " the possible thing of God" (to SwaTov avTov, v. 22). 
It is forlornly sad that this bearing of that sentence should 
have been lost. When both the versions (E. V. & Re.), and 



CHAPTER VIII. 227 

all our commentators read, ^'- wishing to 77iake His power known** 
it is one of those numerous cases where the sense of the Spirit 
is just cut in two at the moment of completion. Paul is deal- 
ing with the thought that God does the best He can, in the 
sense which God Himself encourages in numerous passages 
(Is. 5:4; Lam. 3 : 33 ; 2 Pet. 3:9); and he suddenly brings 
out the expression, ^^ wilii?ig to make k?iown what is possible for 
Him" and the commentators ruin it by the sense, wishing to 
show His power. In the present case, nobody has mistaken 
the meaning, — " the impossible of the law.'* And Paul at once 
prompts us as to what it is : — " The impossible of the law " is 
the iLKa'n^iia (a "making righteous"). The 6LKaLu>iia of the law 
is one of the most splendid things in the universe. It exists 
in the case of the Almighty. God is made righteous, or con- 
stituted holy, by his grand obedience to law. So are angels. 
So was Christ. So are other worlds, we have reason to be 
confident. The ^LKaluaa of the law is the great ^^ righteous 
making,'' and among boundless peoples. But, on earth, it fails. 
Why is that ? Paul describes it by the language, JVo righteous 
making by the works of the law (Gal. 2 : 16), and his evident 
meaning is that works which the law can prompt are never by 
that prompting holy (see com. 3: 20). And why? He 
answers in unnumbered fashions. Because we are dead (v. 6); 
because we are slaves (v. 21); because we are deceived (7: 11); 
because we are cursed (Gal. 3 : 10); because ^'' the law of the 
Spirit of the life in Christ Jesus " must make us free '■fro?n the 
law of the sin and the death ; " or, to take now the present pic- 
ture, because "it" (the law) "was weak through the flesh." 
It could make God righteous, because He is strong, or the 
angel Michael, or an unfallen planet, but "us" it cannot 
reach, because it "was weak through the flesh." Paul had 
said this before, '' JFhen we were yet weak, Christ died for the 
ungodly" (5 : 6). Our conscience is too ^'weak" to resist our 
flesh, and it is growing weaker. This constitutes an incurable 
curse. The law cannot reach that ; and so Paul preludes 
what he is about to say : — " What the law could not do." " G-od 
sending His own son." This does not prove that the '■^Son* 



228 ROMANS. 

was begotten before God's incarnation in Him, for other men 
were spoken of as ^^ sent.'* " There was a man sent from God 
whose name was John " (Jo. i : 6 ; see also Matt. 9 : 38 ; 
Lu. 11: 49). ** In the likeness of sinful flesh." A Presby- 
terian rather surprises us by the following comments: *' 'A/zapnaf,. 
the genitive of quality, showing that the human nature spoken 
of is a sinful and corrupt human nature, if contemplated in 
itself and apart from the miraculous conception by the Holy 
Ghost. The qualifying epithet dfiapnag describes human nature 
simply as it descends from Adam. As such it is a sinful 
nature. St, Paul is contemplating it from t/iis point of view 
only, when he employs the epithet. It does not follow that 
when a portion of this sinful and corrupt human nature is 
assumed into union with the Eternal Logos [let us rather say 
with the One Jehovah. — M.] it is still sinful and corrupt. In 
and by the miraculous conception it is perfectly sanctified, so 
that though it is sinful flesh or corrupt human nature in Mary 
the mother, it is a 'holy thing' or perfect human nature in 
Jesus the child. Compare Lu. i : 35 ; 2 Cor. 5 : 21 ; Heb. 
4 : 15 ; 10 : 5 ; i Pet. 2:22. . . . The Logos does not 
take into personal union with himself a human nature created 
ex nihilo for this particular purpose, and which, consequently, 
could not be a <^oip^ afiapriaQ, but he assumed into union with 
himself a human nature that descended by ordinary genera- 
tion from Adam down to the Virgin Mary, and which in this 
connection and relation was sinful flesh. Before, however, it 
could be a constituent part of the God-man, it must be entirely 
purged from the effects of the Fall " (Shedd, Com. in loco). 
Take away the allusion to an " Eternal Logos," which John 
carefully aimed to correct (see " Is God a Trinity ? " p. 89), 
and add the idea that Christ's intended sacrifice purged His 
humanity ab ovo perfectly and before sinning, just as it did 
that of any pre-Christian like Abraham imperfectly and after 
sinning, and we have in Dr. Shedd a singularly correct exposi- 
tion. "/« the likeness.'' This word 6fj.oL6fia occurs but six times in 
the Testament. On each of those six occasions it means, not 
simply like^ but very closely and essentially like. Four of the 



CHAPTER VIII. 229 

cases are in Romans. "//2 a likeness of an image Oj corruptible 
man'' (Rom. i : 23), means strangly and very ruinously like, ^'In 
the likeness of Adam's transgression" (Rom. 5 : 14), means very 
specifically like it. "//z the likeness of His death "(6:5), means 
eminently like^ yet with differences. '■'■In the likeness of men " (Phil. 
2 : 7), means to all intents and purposes a man, yet with differ- 
ences, as for example that He did not sin, as for example that 
He had no father, and as for example that He was one with the 
Almighty. So, as Dr. Shedd has partially declared, '' God sending 
His own son in the likeness of sinful fleshy' sent Him like in most 
intimate particulars ; first, as of the race of Adam ; second, as 
under that curse ; third, as inheriting infirmity ; fourth, as hor- 
ribly tempted ; fifth, as horribly tortured. His torture caused by 
His temptation ; sixth, as dying and rising ; and seventh, as 
being a man like us, in every sense not now hereinafter to be 
distinctly declared. For, first, He is unlike us in His Divinity. 
Specifically and actually and in eternal person He is what none 
of us is, God and man in two distinct natures and one person 
forever. And then He differs, second, in sinlessness. He was 
like " sinful fleshy" but with that difference, for the reasons 
stated, that He was never '■'■sinful." And then if we add 
all the primacy of His redemption, that He is the head and 
we are the members, that He is the God and we are His people, 
that He is the Shepherd and we are the flock, that we are the 
lost and He is the Redeemer, that He is of the first Adam, but 
nevertheless also the last Adam, and saved, we hope, Adam and 
millions afterward, we have reason to see amazing differences, 
and yet one vast likeness, — that He was born of sinful blood, 
and inherited curses from His kindred. " And on account of 
sin." " Gody sending His own son in likeness of sinful flesh, and 
on account of sin, condemned sin in the flesh." It has been 
'■'■ condem7ted'' and will be ^^ condemned'' whenever the lost sink 
into perdition. But the passage becomes expressive only 
when we finish it. " With the result." See all that has been 
said of "wa in other passages (4 : 18 ; 6 : i, 6 ; Gal. 5 : 17). It is 
nothing wonderful to condei7in sin, but to condemn sin with cer- 
tain results, that is the glory of the apostle. The law makes 



230 ROMANS. 

God righteous, and Christ, and Gabriel, and glorious myriads 
of the unfalien, but it makes me miserable, and damns me, 
and follows me through the eternal age, but lo ! wonder of 
the universe ! Christ has altered all that, and by His very 
^''likeness to sinful flesh,'' and ^^ on account of sin,'' that He 
might abolish it. He has managed to condemn sin, which is 
all the law demands, and then to set loose the law itself that 
it may return to its universal work, — ^"^ with the result that the 
law's righteous-making be fulfilled in us, who walk not 
after flesh but after spirit." 

^'' Righteous-maki72g." There is no deference to the apostle 
in saying '•''righteousness" (E. V.). Why did not he say 
^^righteousness?" Ai/ca/w/za has a distinct orthography, and it 
means the making of any thing or man right or righteous. Law 
is nothing to a cow or horse, but can become law only to a 
conscience. Nay, we can weave that sentence closer yet, and 
say that it requires conscience to make a law, or to give it any 
being, or impart to it any binding efficacy whatever. Law, in 
this grander sense, makes all the righteousness in the universe. 
But to make anybody righteous, he must have a conscience, 
and this only the Holy Spirit can supply. If the law ceases to 
have power to make any creature righteous, it is a sign the 
conscience has decayed. The law cannot cure that, only the 
Almighty. But " what the law could not do in that it was weak 
through the flesh " (that is the flesh running riot through fee- 
bleness of conscience), God did. He satisfied the law by an- 
other method of conde7nning sin; that the " righteous -making " 
power " of the law " might be restored, with the result indica- 
ted at the close, that we should ^' walk not after flesh" which 
with an enfeebled conscience will always take the rein, but 
" after spirit" viz., after that quickened conscience, after that 
roused and animated sense which Christ bought for us, and 
which is the gift of the Holy Ghost. 

This now is the main stem of the reasoning. But we wish 
also to go back and take up other ideas, which Paul, in the ex- 
uberance of his thought, has made it carry with it. When 
Paul speaks of condeinnijig sin, he means mainly condemning it 



CHAPTER VIII. 231 

by adequate punishment in the cross of the Redeemer. But, 
almost entangling the text, has come the thought, which some 
exegetes have made the only one, that Paul by the whole trend 
of his explication must mean condemning to its overt/wow. 
When the damned criminal is tormented in the pit, sin is " co?i- 
demned" because, as in the case of Christ, it is adequately 
punished ; but, instead of being " condemned" by overthrow, it 
grows immortal. The question is, Did not Paul mean the very 
opposite of this in the language we are considering ? 

Let us go back to the beginning. The word " condemnation' 
(v. I ), is the pregnant word in all the passage. It is beyond 
doubt entirely forensic ; but Paul has prepared us to be entirely 
intelligent about it by the close discussion in the previous 
chapters. It is entirely forensic ; but the very nature of the 
verdict in this penal court is a verdict of abandonment to sin. 
There is no point stronger than this in the epistle to the 
Romans. It lies at the very foundation. Paul turns it over in 
every form of expression. He rarely speaks of torment ; 
though, let it be understood, ^'' tribulation and anguish'' are a 
distinct threatening of the law. But even " tribulation and 
anguish," though they are bodily, and though they are mental, 
are themselves also in part put down as moral. And that grim 
monster, our physical dissolution, back in the very dawn- 
ing of the world, was seized upon as the very darkest illus- 
tration of sin. God said, " In the day thou eatest thereof 
thou shalt die " (Gen. 2 : 17). Moses constantly repeats the 
picture ; " Behold I have set before you this day life and death, 
blessing and cursing." Paul more than any one else adopts 
the same ancient illustration. '' The wages of sin is death." 
And he puts it always in the most practical position. " / had 
been alive without the law at any time." With Paul, therefore, the 
KarcLKpLfia (" condemnation ") is not a thing that breeds torment, 
and, as an incidental thing, leaves us in our sins ; but just the 
other way. The KardKpt^ua in its very gist is wickedness. And 
Paul, in the previous passages, has detailed the only deliver- 
ance. The only deliverance from sinfulness is suffering, and 
such suffering as Christ could endure, imparting to it the in- 



232 ROMANS. 

nocence of His humanity and the price-speaking significance of 
His impersonate Godhead ; and when the deliverance comes, 
just as in the instance of the KaraKpiua, the redemption is entirely- 
forensic, but in its main essence moral. Instead of delivering 
us from the curse, and then, as a consequence of that, making 
us holy, the dtKalufia or '' righteous-making " of the cross is the 
very gist of the gospel benefit. It mars the gospel to speak 
of the " imputation of righteousness." The imputation of 
suffering from so innocent a Prince as Christ is enough for 
our redemption, and then the imparting of righteousness is the 
very substance of the bestowment when we are to speak of our 
gracious pardon. There is indeed a surplus over in the shape 
of " hope.'' Paul is about to say (v. 24), " We were saved in 
the for 7n of hope;'' and that thought is expressed by the word 
'■^earnest" (2 Cor. i : 22 ; 5 : 5.). When we are converted we 
have a " hope of righteousness which is by faith " (Gal. 5 : 5). 
But our great seedling blessing is our holiness ; and our great 
mother curse is our sin. And the KardKptfia, which this chapter 
triumphs in, is not a forensic verdict chiefly of pain, but a 
forensic verdict chiefly of sin, and that we may make no 
mistake in this, all Paul's previous reasoning comes here into 
play. 

For example the StKaluiua is purchased. That is to say, the 
making of us righteous is the thing bought by the suffering 
of the Redeemer. In the second place the SiKaiu/ia must be by 
God. That is to say. He who created us must create us over 
again by the Holy Spirit. God, as He moves in creatures, is 
called the Spirit (" i^reath," Heb. and Gr., Job 26 : 13), and, as 
He moves morally in creatures, is called the Holy Spirit, 
This, unlike the ''holy arm" (Is. 51 : 9 ; 52 : 10), or the " holy 
name " (Deut. 28 : 58 ; Ps. iii : 9), has been snatched by Pla- 
tonic mutilators of the truth, and made to degrade our Christi- 
anity. This Holy Breath of our divine Regenerator meets a 
part of nature where He was always present, viz., our con- 
science, and it is by renewing that that a man is justified 
(made righteous). 

We understand then at once the language that is to come so 



CHAPTER VIII. 233 

prominently into play. The ''''spirit'' is that part of a man 
that is tenanted by the Spirit of God, and the ''^ flesh " is all 
the other part ; and now we need scarcely do more than repeat 
the different verses as they occur. ^' The law of the Spirit of 
the life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of the 
sin and the death " (v. 2). " The law'' for good is just as much 
of Sinai as ^'' the law" for evil; for Christ has paid ''''the 
law " till it demands our sanctification. " For what the law 
could not do in that it was weak through the flesh." This is 
transparently intelligible. He is about to say, " So then they 
that are in the flesh cannot please God" (v. 7), and, one 
sentence previously, " For the mind of the flesh is death" 
(v. 6), and the reason is obvious : — If Christ has bought us, 
and we are to be saved by the Spirit, and we quench the 
Spirit, of course we " camiot please God" and originally without 
any Christ at all, being left entirely to the ^^ flesh" the 
law would be impotent except to curse. But (" a thiiig which 
the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesli), Gody 
sending His own son in the likeiiess of siiiful fleshy and for sin, 
condemned si?t in the flesh" (v. 3). The verb is in the aorist. 
We do not like to press such points. But the word condemn 
is never elsewhere applied to '^ sin" and never anywhere in any 
such case as this given in an aorist meaning. It will be in- 
nocent certainly at least to use it as an illustration. Condem- 
nation is never finished in an everlasting Tophet. We are 
^^ conde77ined" diwdi ys!^ diXQ. "■ conde7n7ied." Christ finished trans- 
gression and made an end of sin (Dan. 9 : 24), and, therefore, 
in Him transgression was punished \xv an aorist sense. " With 
the result that the righteous-making of the law " (the " righteous- 
making " in every sense, that is, the right-fnaking of the act and 
the " righteous -making " of the subjects of it ), " iiiight be ful- 
filled in us J " and then, as a matter of course, comes this de- 
scription, '' ivho walk ?iot after flesh, but after spirit." 

This damned state of being in the ^^ flesh " Paul character- 
izes thus as being a " walk " or voluntary trespass, but he goes 
deeper in the verse that follows, and makes it a matter of our 
«* thinking." 



234 ROMANS. 

5. For they that are after flesh do think the things of the 
flesh, but they that are after spirit, the things of the 
spirit. 

The question that agitated theology some decades ago^ 
whether all sin consisted in moral exercises, is completely- 
ploughed under in these chapters of Paul. Sinfulness is a de- 
ficiency of love. Love is in two separate senses. A man is a 
sinner who does not love God sufficiently in one sense, and his 
neighbor sufficiently in another. And the Bible measures out 
to us with exactness the bounds of this sufficiency (Matt. 22 : 
37j 39-)- What did the old theologian mean ? If he meant that 
sinfulness was an exercise, the very idea was absurd. If he 
meant, however, that a sinful state, like a sinful act, might be 
punished, again there is a tinge of foolishness, for we have 
seen, and most abundantly from Paul, that sinfulness is itself 
a punishment. Let not men sit loose to the idea of torment, 
for we believe in it as an eternal penalty ; but sin is the great 
mother curse, and so far as sin means sinfulness it is itself 
the higher penalty of the violated law. If, however, sin means, 
acts, of course they are moral exercises. But the question 
really goes deeper. The puzzle that agitates men's minds is 
precisely that with which the apostle grapples. If the question 
mean, is there anything sinful in the mind except moral exer- 
cises, we would answer yes and no. Sinfulness is a deficiency. 
If a deficiency is a '■'■ thing " we would answer, Yes. But Paul 
goes so far in asserting the mere privativeness of transgression 
that he says, " What I do I know not'' (7 : 15). We cannot 
see a nothingness. We can see with the eyes of ^^ flesh,'' that 
is, the joys and tastes of our unsaved nature. And we can see 
with the eyes of conscience, a thing that confuses our ideas, 
for there is a spiritual sight left in God's part of our decaying 
humanity. But our deficiency, who can see that ? Paul, there- 
fore, solves the riddle when he declares that our ^^ flesh " is the 
seat of our iniquity. Conscience being altogether too weak, is 
trodden upon and smothered by other desires. And those 
desires which in heaven would be our glory, on earth are our 
sins, because they " exercise," so to speak, our deficiencies of 



CHAPTER VIII. 235 

" spirit^'' and are those desperate lusts which violate our re- 
maining virtue. 

Now, as the being of the mind shows itself only in its daily 
exercises, the mind is destroying itself thought by thought. 
Every act sinks it, and, what Isaiah says under a beautiful 
image, "We all do fade as a leaf" (Is. 64: 6), Solomon 
grapples more boldly, for he says " emotion " (and the word 
covers everything, aroused feeling of any kind), *' kills the 
foolish man " {Job 5 : 2). 

6. For the thinking of the flesh is death, but the think- 
ing of the spirit is life. 

Paul's picture is now complete. Let us bring up the other 
part of it. " For they that are after flesh do think the 
things of the flesh." This is the very nature of the curse. 
When once the conscience is weakened, what then ? The 
"y?f.f>^ " being stronger than the '■'■spirit,'' will of course do 
most of the "thinking," and if each thought kills, there is 
evolved just what the Bible describes, viz., a sinking and a dying 
condition of the sinner. Our being, so far as we see it, floats 
in a perpetual current. That current soils or clears itself. Each 
good thought clears it. Each bad thought fouls it. Now, as 
" they that are after flesh do think the things of the flesh, the 
thinking of the flesh is death ; " and as " they that are after 
Spirit" do think "the things of the Spirit, the thinking 
of the Spirit is life." This is saying all the truth ; for to 
say with Christ, " My meat is to do the will of Him that sent 
me " (Jo. 4 : 34), or to say with Paul, " Herein do I exercise 
myself" (Acts 24: 16), does not go a stone's throw further; 
for the virtue of an act is in the thought (14 : 14), and the 
value of an " exercise " does not consist in the agitation of a 
nerve, or the practice of a muscle, but consists in the '''■thought'' 
that rules and prompts it. So that if the. ^^ thought** of the 
flesh is of " the things of the flesh, the thinking of the flesh is 
death,'* while ^^ the thinking of the Spirit," which must be the 
special gift of a redemption, " is life' 

6. (and peace^ 7. Because the thinking of the flesh 

is enmity in respect to God, for it is not subject to the 



236 ROMANS 

law of God, for neither can it be ; 8. But they that are 
in flesh cannot please God). 

It will be seen that we draw a line around these sentences 
by way of parenthesis. Paul keeps close in all his epistle to 
ideas that are subjective ; at the same time he would tremble 
if he forgot anything forensic. He pauses, therefore, to keep 
up a continual balance. Having plunged more deeply than 
usual into philosophic reasoning, and shown by the very nature 
of the soul that evil ^^ thought" blackens and deadens and will 
damn the sinner, he takes in by a sort of eddy of his rhetoric 
the fact that nature is but the order of the Most High. Sin 
breeds sin by a curse, and the curse is but the creature of 
"the law." If " the thinking of the Spirit is life,'' therefore, by 
an order equally lawful, Paul takes occasion to throw in the 
idea that it is also " peace " ; and then, by a neatly carved 
parenthesis, he gives the obvious reasons, "Because the 
thinking of the flesh " (and how well he may say this is evi- 
dent, because *' the thinking of the flesh " constitutes all possible 
transgression) — "-^ Because the thinking of the flesh is enmity in 
respect to God:" See remarks on this under a previous passage 
(7 : 22) : " For it is not subject to the law of God." Of course 
not: for if holiness consists in love, or, if you please, in ^'thought,'' 
how can love spring in that which by its very nature as de- 
fined, has the " desires " of other things. "// is not subject to 
the law of God, for neither can it be." And then the residue 
thoroughly defends our reasoning. It is unfortunate to say, 
^^ emnity against God" {Yj. V. & Re.), for the preposition is 
UQ not /card, and the enmity is both ways, of us agai7ist God, 
and of God against us. 'E^f expresses that ; and therefore, we 
have said, ^'' in respect to" the Almighty. Paul's only comment 
on the ^^emnity" will not suit ^'against" (E. V. & Re.); for it 
is this : — "But they that are in flesh cannot please God." 

The phenomenon next to be considered is that a little par- 
ticle direfj, which no commentator seems to have considered, 
gives a fresh turn, and imparts a new significance, where pro- 
gress in the discussion seemed rather to fail. It would 
naturally strike the apostle that there were no people ^^ in 



CHAPTER VIII. 237 

Spirit'' \ and that being"/// yf(?j-/^ " was so universal in our 
humanity, that ^^ thinking the things of the flesh'' would more 
exercise the saints than what pious exercise they had in the 
^''things of the Spirit." Paul, therefore, having laid down the 
fundamentals in the case, and committed himself to the fact 
that ^'■the thinking of the flesh is death" shapes the teaching to 
the case of the believer. He says boldly, "Ye are not in 
flesh, but in Spirit," and then, to make true so impossible an 
idea, he has the same reserve that our Saviour needed when 
He said, '' Now ye are clean through the word that I have 
spoken unto you." The apostles were anything but clean. 
When Paul, therefore, says, "Wherefore holy brethren, par- 
takers of the heavenly calling" (Heb. 3 : i), he drops the 
sense to the proper state of the reality, just as we shall see 
he does in the present instance : — 

9. But ye are not in flesh, but in Spirit, if even a Spirit 
of God dwell in you. 

It would have been strangely confusing if Paul had not said 
this. He of all men needed some such " if even." He had 
looked Corinth boldly in the face, and said to its saved saints 
in the broadest language, " Ye are yet fleshly " (i Cor. Z'- Z)\ 
and then would make them confess it ; " For while one saith 
I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are ye not fleshly ? " 
To take for granted, therefore, that all saints thought ^^ the 
thinking " of the Spirit, and to sweep them into all the bless- 
ings of the Kingdom without a word of explanation, were not 
like Paul, and, therefore, just such a turn in the passage 
should be looked for as we are about to unearth. Paul, to 
arrange it, brings in a new word (okeZ). He is willing to admit 
their • saintship, if the Holy Ghost in His saving efficacy 
"dwell in" them at all. Their infirm beginnings in the Spirit 
account for their delinquency. And, therefore, he is ready to 
pronounce upon them at once : " Ye are not in flesh but in 
Spirit ;" and to do it upon this new departure, "If even a 
Spirit of God dwell in you ; " 

9.— But if any man have not a Spirit of Christ he is 
none of His. 



238 ROMANS. 

Paul has thus brought all down to the gracious level of the 
Gospel. 

"7/ eve?iy This word {dTtep) occurs six times in the whole 
New Testament. The lexicons agree that it means " if even '* 
sometimes, and that is enough for our translation; but it 
really looks as if the whole six cases had a touch of the same 
significance. They are all of Paul except one, and that one 
is perhaps more distinctly interesting than most of Paul's 
cases. It is in the language of Peter (i Pet. 2: 3). He is com- 
manding, " As new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the 
word that ye may grow thereby " (E. V.), and then adds, what 
in the ordinary translation seems superfluous, " If so be ye have 
tasted that the Lord is gracious " (E. V.). Winer goes so far 
as to say that i Pet. 2 : 3 seems to be of a rhetorical nature ! 
(Win. Gram. §. 53, 8). And yet what really does it mean unless 
we give to elirep its peculiar significance ? If you have even 
^^ fas fed" that the Lord is gracious, then, under the instinct of 
that taste, '^grow," nursing your desire for the sincere milk of 
the word. Paul says, ^^ If even there are those called Gods, as 
there are Gods many and Lords many " (and anything else in 
those days was a very improbable claim), yet ''to us there is 
but one God, etc., etc." (i Cor. 8: 5). And in arguing for 
the resurrection he says. If the more universal thing does not 
happen, or, expressing it in his own language, "7/ even dead 
men are not raised, then is Christ not risen " (i Cor. 15 : 15). 
*'// we even suffer with Him " is one of the other cases, and 
we shall meet it presently (v. 17); and the only remaining one 
is 2 Thess. i : 6. 

"Dwell." The meaning of the apostle seems to be. Reign 
in us and fill us with His fruits, He certainly does not, but " if 
(He) even dwell in " us, or, to express it in a kindred English, if 
He make even an imperfect lodgment in our nature, then we may 
be said to be " in Spirit ; " and here Paul takes his stand. We 
must have this, or not Christ in any fashion ; or, abiding by 
our text, " If any man have not a Spirit of Christ, he is none 
of His." 

"^ Spirity A little further on we have, "^ spirit of bond- 



CHAPTER VIII. 239 

age^'' and a little further still, ^^ a spirit of adoption'' (v. 15). 
We are debating whether " spirit'' without a capital would not 
answer better, as ^' spirit" in man and in God border so closely 
together (i : 4 ; 8 : 9 ; Gal. 5 : 17) ; but all is so of the Holy 
Spirit* that it may do no harm always to be marking our debt 
to God for our sanctification, though the anarthrous condition 
of the -Kvzviia should certainly be noticed. 

A third person of a Trinity, and a procession of this third 
personage from the first and the second, and long controver- 
sies and wars that established this, make ^^ filioque " a word 
that will one day be a shame in the church. That Paul should 
have doubled on his idea, and said " a Spirit of Christ," is 
ruined by those ancient rationalisms. Nothing in Germany is 
more cold than this. The " Spi?^it " is God, or as Paul after- 
wards expressed it, " Now the Lord is that Spirit " (2 Cor. 3 : 
17). Th.Q^' Spirit of Christ" is that of which Gabriel spoke, 
which overshadowed his mother (Lu. i : ^^). It is God Him- 
self without whom Christ was a" worm " (Is. 41: 14 ; Ps. 22: 6). 
And recognizing God as immediately in Christ, and, in fact, 
immediately Christ, and immediately in us, though in our case 
only lodging imperfectly within us, is the only way to hold up 
naturally before us our baptism into the Redeemer. 

10. But if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of 
sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. 

"Christ in you." The chapter began with just the oppo- 
site arrangement of the language, for it spoke of those " in 
Christ" (v. i). Paul seems to have employed all his terse ex- 
pressions mainly in this epistle. It is fortunate that in each 
case he thoroughly explains. Before he ventured upon the 
expression, those "//z Christ" he explained thoroughly our 



* Spirit is the God-part of man. Even if it stands with a small s it is con- 
science ; and conscience is God in the human soul. When our spirit is 
warmed by God's Spirit, ** God is in (us) of a truth " (i Cor. 14 : 25). And 
our Saviour takes care to say this. He says, "Spirit is God." " The hour 
cometh and now is when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in 
Spirit and in truth. Spirit is God, and they that worship Him, must wor- 
ship Him in Spirit and in truth " (Jo. 4 : 23. 24). 



240 ROMANS. 

being ^^ baptized into His deat/i," SLud our being *^ planted to- 
gether " (E. v.), or, more strictly to give the Greek, our being 
" bred in with Him in the likeness of His resurrection.'' He does 
not forget the same necessary prelude here. He speaks of the 
Spirit in us (v. 9) ; calls it " a Spirit of God" and then, as 
given to the Redeemer, " a Spirit of Christ " (v. 9) ; and then, 
as won by His death, and actually embraced by His divine 
nature given to His people, speaks of it as ^'Christ in you." Our 
blessed Redeemer is in us, not when His flesh is, in the shape of 
a transubstantiated wafer, nor when He Himself is, by a foolish 
notion of the omnipresence of the Man, but when the God is 
present, that is when Christ's Godhead is workmg within us, to 
subdue our sins, and to " deaden the deeds of the body" (v. 
13). " But if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of 
sin." Pitiful views of Christ as a Pagan Second Person, and 
pitiful views of the Spirit as the Platonic Third Person, and 
pitiful views of "righteousness" as being an affair of court, 
are very apt to breed a miserable letting down of all the great 
principles of the inspired oracles. What is the death of " the 
body / " And moreover ^^the body " is not *' dead; " it is the last 
thing to die in this splendid history of our being. Moreover it 
is the yoking of the mule with the horse to talk of " the body 
(being) dead because of sin" and " the spirit life because of 
righteousness." This very linking should keep us straight in 
these particulars. To say 

1 1 . But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from among^ 
the dead dwell in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from 
among the dead shall quicken your mortal bodies also 
through His Spirit dwelling in you, 

and then to translate the whole as though it were of a rismg out 
of Joseph's tomb, is to forget, first of all, that all rise, saint no 
more certainly than sinner ; to forget, again, that Paul is in the 
midst of a great forthright line of spiritual argumentation, and 
to forget, thirdly, that mere body-raising is not the great work 
of " a Spirit of Christ" and the raising itself, whether of His 
body or ours, is but a slender part of the fact of our redemp- 
tion. We would have less to say in the way of complaint if 



CHAPTER VIII. 241 

Paul had not been so careful. He has given us no end of 
light upon these physical illustrations. " Flesh " has become 
almost technical. And to give more body to it, that is to give 
it more the look of a strong and well centered organization, 
Paul calls '' the flesh " '' the body " (6 : 6 ; 7 : 24 ; Col. 2: 11), 
meaning infinitely far from our mere organized clay, but all 
our most refined tastes and all our most elevated worldliness 
which is not patterned after the Spirit of the Almighty. It is 
a great luxury to bring all these lights together, and to show 
by unbounded evidence the spiritual sense of " the body.'' 

If Christ be said to be '' in the likeness of the flesh of sin " 
(v. 3), that being understood to mean in the likeness of our 
whole nature, what madness to look back upon " the body of 
sin " (6 : 6), or in fact upon any of that whole context, and 
imagine that " the body " and " the flesh " ought not to have cor- 
responding interpretations. But if " the body of sin (being) de- 
stroyed'' (E. V.) means, as Paul expounds it, ^^ that we hence- 
forth should no more serve sin," how unwarrantable, when we 
come upon the expression again, to say that '^ the body (being) 
dead because of sifi " means that our clay is dead ; when, in the 
first place, our clay is not ^' dead ; " when, in the second place, 
our ^'^ flesh " in Paul's sense of the word " is dead j " when, in 
the third place, it is dead quoad " the flesh " even in the Chris- 
tian ; when, in the fourth place, it is balanced against so high 
an idea as that the spirit is life, and when, in the fifth place, 
" the body " as not '^ the flesh " in the Paulinian or higher sense, 
would drop the thought quite out of the line of argument ; for 
" the body (being) dead because of siit" if counted as our fleshly 
nature, and " the spirit (being) life because of righteousness" if 
counted as our new man, fit exactly, and are all that can re- 
deem the passage from creating a break in the chain of rea- 
soning. 

This view will strengthen as we proceed. 

" But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from among 
the dead." There are certain passages of the Scripture with 
which the current theology never grapples. Why is Christ called 
" The first begotten from among the dead ? " He was not the 



242 ROMANS. 

first to rise. Why is He called " the first fruits of them that 
slept ? " Why, in this passage, is He said to be " raised from 
among the dead ? " No commentator ever notices this. ' And 
yet there is a method in the speech which long ago should 
have claimed a signification. On the base of the body no 
meaning can be shown. Christ was raised long after the Shu- 
namite's son, and months after Lazarus. But if we hold it as 
meaning that Christ was cursed (Gal. 3 : 13) ; that He was a 
child of Adam ; that He was tainted by Adam's blood in posse, 
and unless kept off by God through covenanted grace, in esse, 
as an heir with all the children of Adam ; that He was, there- 
fore, ''infirm" (Heb. 5 : 2), and temptible (Heb. 2 : 18), and 
6avaT0)delg according to another apostle, that is, given over 
to ^^ death " as far as ^^ the flesh " is concerned, and " quickened 
(only) by the Spirit " (i Pet. 3 : 18) ; then all this lies under 
sun-light. He was " raised from among the dead'' in the most 
intelligible sense. Men dead in sin lay all around Him. He 
was " the first begotten from among the dead; " not in time, for 
Enoch rose out of sin before Him ; but in the order of nature. 
He had to be arranged for first, that any might be begotten 
afterward. And this language He thoroughly approves ; for 
what sentence could be more humiliating than this : '' Who in 
the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and sup- 
plications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able 
to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared " 
(Heb. 5:7)? 

" Body" therefore means the " old man " with all his organ- 
ized tastes and powers. When, therefore, Paul says that 
" Christ " may be ^'in " us, and nevertheless our " dody (be) dead 
because of si?iy" he means that we have an " old man " that 
would take possession of us again if the Spirit left us. The 
Peter with his '' I go a fishing " would never come back to 
Christ if left to his ^^ dead body.'' Paul had remembered this 
when he said, " Ye are not iii the flesh but in the Spirit^" yet 
had put it on the lowest ground, ^^ If even a Spirit of God have 
got so much as a lodgment in you " (v. 9). The whole organized 
"flesh'* remains, and he calls it a "body." He calls it in this 



CHAPTER VIII. 243 

passage, ^'^ the dead body ;" in the sixth chapter, "//z^ body of 
sin " (6 : 6); soon after, '' the body of this death " (7 : 24); then 
presently he is to speak of " deadening the practices of the body "; 
and afterward of " the redemption of our body," which we 
are yet to explain ; and then, in Colossians, of ^''putting off the 
body of the sins of the flesh ; " and finally of quickening our " mor- 
tal bodies y These are all of this same apostle ; and he must be 
a stiff exegete who refuses to say, that Paul illustrates by " the 
body'' the sum total of our carnal nature. " Because of sin." 
That is the very essence of death. "Because of righteous- 
ness." That is the very essence of "life." It is indeed a 
very meagre " righteousness^'' and a very struggling and incipient 
^^life." But such is the very idea of Paul. The "new man" 
has. a powerful ally. If YL^ gets a lodgment {oIkec), we must treat 
Him shamefully, or He will grow. "7/ the Spirit of Him who 
raised Jesus from among the dead (oiKec) dwell in you, He who 
raised Christ Jesus from among the dead," and did it per- 
fectly, so as to " quicken (His) mortal body," that is, give life to 
His ^^ flesh," though it would have been by nature " dead" -vfWX 
^^also quicken" yours, though not perfectly as with Him, but 
partially, by the lodgment of the Spirit, who begins at once the 
conflict for us. 

The phrase "mortal body" is singularly'well chosen. As it 
is to be inclusive of Christ, ve/cpdv, or " dead" would not answer. 
His ff6i//a or fleshly nature was never ^'- dead" but horribly 
^^ mortal." It was chased by death, that is, pressed awfully 
by sin, as the very essence of His sacrifice. '-^He who raised 
Him from among the dead" that is, away from falling into sin, 
and not only kept Him sinless, but lifted Him at last from 
anything " mortal" and by that is meant from being tempted to 
transgress, will also lift us up (for thus far we have little else 
than what Paul is yet to call a " hope of righteousness" 
Gal. 5 : 5), and will raise up even our ^^flesh" (and by that is 
meant, will make righteous our whole man); or, in the meta- 
phor of Paul, "will quicken (our) mortal bodies also by 
His Spirit that dwells in us." Thus, according to Paul, 
we have " the old man " and " the new man." The " new 



244 ROMANS. 

man " is nothing more than a better conscience ; renovated 
indeed by the Holy Spirit, as is made possible by redemption. 
That spirit ^^ is life because of righteousness'' (v. lo). ^^ Right- 
eousness " is the attribute of the conscience, and nothing gives it 
but the Holy Ghost ! The " old man " is our ^' body of death "; 
and we long to be rid of it. Yet it has all our peerless treas- 
ures of a natural kind. This splendid creature, with its taste 
and intellect, life eats in upon till it is more and more appro- 
priated by the Redeemer. Paul duplicates his picture a little 
afterward ; for what he calls here life, quickening at last even 
our dead nature, or, the whole of our " old man," that is, in 
present tropical description, our " mortal body,'* he serves up 
over yonder (v. 24) as the subject of our *■' hope'' He says 
^'■We were saved in the shape of hope," because ^'■hope" was 
among our chief treasures when we were first converted. 
Redemption is mainly hoped for ; for the largest fruitage of 
redemption is yet to be. For " if we hope for that we see 
not, then do we with patience wait for it." And, gathering all 
his " hope " into one expression, he uses over again that figure 
of the ^'■body" for he says, ^'■And not only they" (that is the 
suffering ^^ creatures"), "but ourselves also, who have the first 
fruits of the Spirit " (that is who have a Spirit merely lodged 
within us as a base from which to fight for us), " even we our- 
selves groan within ourselves, waiting for adoption, to wit, the 
redemption of our body " (vs. 23, 24). 

''^The body" therefore, is the whole man, outside of grace,, 
and the apostle hopes that in ** the day of redemption " (Eph. 4 r 
30), that is, the day par excellence entitled to the name, our 
^^ dead body" will be ^^ raised," that is our "old man " will be 
filled with the blessings of " redemption." 

If this be so, we ought to be allies of this struggling grace. 
Paul returns to the idea of our share in the work : — 

12. Then, therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to 
the flesh to live after flesh. 

The battle is not so far fought that we can win if we desert. 

13. For if ye live after flesh, ye will die ; but if in Spirit 
ye deaden the practices of the body, ye shall live. 



CHAPTER VIII. 245 

If I live, it is not I that live, Paul would say, but Christ that 
liveth in me (Gal. 2 : 20). The raising of our dead nature is 
not only by Christ, but it is a miracle ; and Paul would have 
us to believe that it is the most God-like act that God had ever 
committed. Indeed he sheds a kindred light upon it as in the 
present passage. He would have us " Know what is the ex- 
ceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe," 
and then brings in immediately the case of Christ ; — " Which 
He wrought in Christ ; " and then falls upon the same idea of 
Christ's being raised up from among the spiritually dead and 
from fleshly ruin. To suppose he meant His clay would be 
singularly weak. His grave speech betokens what Christ calls 
" sanctification " (Jo. 10: 36), ** which He wrought in Christ 
when He raised Him from among the dead, and set Him at 
His own right hand in heavenly things" (Eph. i : 19, 20). 

And yet, for all that this is so the work of the Almighty, 
Paul treats it as though it were our own. He warns as if it 
were wholly ours. "If ye live after flesh, ye shall die." 
Christ Himself was warned in a similar manner ; — " If Thou 
wilt walk in My ways and if Thou wilt keep My charge, then 
Thou shalt also judge My house, and shalt also keep My 
courts, and I will give Thee companions among them that 
walk with Thee " (Zech. 3 : 7). This mingling of God's will 
with man's will is quite intelligible ; for it is on man's will that 
God's will must operate ; and it is by such words as those of 
Paul that God, here called " the Spirit,'' operates upon man in 
the work of redemption. "If in Spirit ye deaden the prac- 
tices of the body, ye shall live." Mortal could give glory 
to his Maker no more enthusiastically than Paul, and yet he 
says, " I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, 
lest, having preached to others, I myself should be a cast- 
away " (i Cor. 9 : 27). 

" In Spirit." It must be in the region of a renovated con- 
science. Nay, it must be as conscience itself {dative) that 
the deadening work must go on. The inward man, being 
renewed, makes the outward man perish. " Deaden ; " Qavarbu^. 
We must give up these " practices " to die. This Greek never 



246 ROMANS. 

means to kill (E. V., 2 Cor. 6 : 9), and it never means to ^^^ut 
to death'' (E. V., Matt. 10 : 21). It means to deliver over to 
die, or to make a dead man of a person, forensically or from the 
certainty of his dying. An observance of this would have 
saved a very important passage. Peter does not say, " Being 
put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit" (E. V., 
I Pet. 3 : 18), but he says, " Made a dead man of as to the 
flesh, but made alive by the Spirit," — language which perfectly 
describes our exalted Head. To make all this certain, let us 
examine the Bible. Qavarou) occurs eleven times in the New 
Testament writings. When Paul says, " For thy sake are we 
killed all the day long " (E. V. & Re., Rom. 8 : 2>^\ this Irish- 
English reveals the mistranslation. He uses the word in two 
other cases, one, "Ye were made dead" (7: 4), which we 
have already considered ; and the other, " chastened and 
not killed " (E. V. & Re., 2 Cor. 6 : 9), obviously meaning, 
" chastened but not delivered over to death." The six other 
cases are found in the Gospels, and are applied to Christ and 
His persecuted people. The chief priests took counsel 
together "to hand Him over to death" (Matt. 26 : 59; 17 : 
I ; Mar. 14 : 55), for, "to put Him to death " (E. V. & Re.) 
was distinctly forbidden. And then " some of (the disciples) 
should they cause to be put to death " (E. V. & Re., Luke 21 : 
16). "And the children shall rise up against their parents, 
and cause them to be put to death " (Matt. 10 : 21; Mar. 13 : 
12). We are so particular about this word because we shall 
meet it in other cases. We give over the ^' flesh " to die when 
we yield to the Spirit. " The practices of the body " is 
another demonstration that it is not the clay Paul is speaking 
of either in the case of Christ or His people. 

14. For as many as are led by a Spirit of God, they 
are sons of God. 

The word davardo) seemed to require some such comfort as 
this. If we can only " deaden " our 'flesh,'' or, using another 
metaphor, crucify it (Gal. 5 : 24), and hang it up to die, 
where is our safety ? We have none actually, Paul would say. 



CHAPTER VIII. 247 

And yet we are not all adrift. The forces of nature are 
stronger than the forces of grace, at least so far as this, that 
the thinking of the flesh exceeds the thinking of the Spirit (Phil. 
2 : 21). Faith, which is another term of the apostle, Christ 
said was as a grain of mustard seed. To look on at the fight, 
tacticians would predict our overthrow. But Paul introduces 
an element of sonship. Love is weak in the believer, but it 
is strong in the Almighty. And though the threat, ^^If ye 
live after flesh ye shall die ^" would seem to have been fulfilled 
already, yet the mere lodgment (olKrjoig, v. 11) of the Spirit has 
vast weight. We must utterly quench Him, or He will continue 
to help. And this Paul assures us of under the image of a 
son. 

15. For ye did not receive a spirit of bondage again to 
fear, but ye received a spirit of adoption wherein we cry 
Abba, Father. 

We have no saintship at all unless we are converted. But 
conversion is so miserable a thing, and we begin so low down 
that we would still be without hope, unless we saw breaking in 
upon our conscience these evidences of affection. 

16. The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we 
are children of God. 

Christ particularly tells us that "He (the Spirit) shall not 
speak of Himself," and that unnoticed sentence means that the 
Spirit does not tell us anything ; that is, that God does not 
make fresh communications when He converts a heart. Christ 
tells us, " What He shall hear, that shall He speak ;" and that 
most reasonable sentence frowns upon all sights and voices 
and actual words in the heart of a sinner. Where God enters 
a soul "What He hears," that is (in that quaint language) 
what He finds there of previous intelligence. He warms into life. 
God, in this work, chooses to call Himself a Holy Breathy and 
what He imparts is really only holiness ; that is He warms into 
life our already possessed truth and gospel. God's " Spirit" 



248 ROMANS. 

and " our Spirit " is our conscience (Jo. 4 : 24; * i Cor. 14 : 25; 
see also Gal. 2 : 20). And His '^ Spirit'' witnesses with '•^ our 
spirit that we are children of God," not by telling us, 
Thou art my begotten son, but by mending our conscience, 
and making us feel that some power is at work in our behalf. 
" Ye did not receive a spirit of bondage again to fear,'* 
though that even was the Spirit of the Almighty, and its des- 
perate struggles were His preliminary work (7 : 23, 24), but ye 
see work achieved and ^^ flesh " conquered. Your conscious- 
ness revealG the change. It may be very weak, and you may 
lose it (Matt. 13: 21), for it is but a " taste " of God's gra- 
ciousness ; but still He will hold you fast, and He will save you, 
unless you trample Him, and this holding fast, though you sin, 
convinces you of His kind heart, and is really that " Spirit of 
adoption wherein we cry Abba, Father." 

17. But if children, also heirs, heirs of God, but joint 
heirs with Christ, if we even suffer with Him, that we may 
also be glorified together. 

Jesus Christ is a man with the one personal Jehovah incar- 
nated in Him. That word incarnated means not, wildly, that 
God became man transmutedly and in a downright way, but, 
taking that word incarnated or infleshed in its more Pauline 
meaning, that the Holy God became personally one with the aap^ 
{^^ flesh "), technically so called, of the blessed Redeemer. If 
the Redeemer was '' born of the flesh," and, according to His 
own doctrine, " That which is born of the flesh is flesh " (Jo. 
3 : 6), then being "born of the Spirit" in His case was what 
there was in being born of God. It was not a common influx 
of the Spirit, but an impersonate condition of the Godhead. 
The Spirit was given to Him (Jo. 3 : 34) without measure. 
God Himself was begotten within Him. And as this was 
Christ's only birth, and He was generate, instead of being 

* The Greek here should not be reversed. Middleton himself covers the 
case with his exceptions (see also Jelf, Gram., §. 460, 2). They that worship 
must worship in spirit. And to enforce that, John seats God in our con- 
science just as we have claimed. "Spirit is God " (see com. i: 9, also i 
Tim. 6 : 5). 



CHAPTER VI n. 249 

regenerate, of God, the great fruit was holiness. God's 
great wealth is holiness. Of course it is man's great gift. 
And as sinfulness is that bottomless pit (Mar. 3 : 29, Re.), 
in which we sink forever unless delivered, we can under- 
stand the words of the apostle, " For as many as are led 
by a Spirit of God they are sons of God ; but if children, 
also heirs," heirs of the greatest thing that God can 
possess ; children through the very loins of God ; heirs 
through the very birth of Christ ; lost, without His Godhead, 
and saved by that Godhead's fruit ; nothing, without the gift 
of holiness, but, with that gift, "heirs of God, but joint heirs 
with Christ;" for Christ Himself is nothing without His God- 
head. Isaiah, on any other base than that, almost ridicules 
Him ; calls Him a " worm " (Is. 41 : 14); speaks of Him as 
" an abomination " (Is. 41 : 24) ; calls '' His sword dust " and 
calls " His bow stubble " (Is. 41 : 2) ; says He conquered by 
ways His feet had never actually travelled (Is. 41 : 3) ; and 
He Himself says, " (I) can do nothing of (myself) " (Jo. 5 : 
19); and is predicted of in this strange soliloquy : "I am a 
worm and no man, a reproach of men and despised of the 
people" (Ps. 22: 6). But, with the Spirit, and that in a 
method of oneness never before known, '' the Lord (who) is 
that Spirit" (2 Cor. 3 : 17) bestows upon Him the thing which 
is that which is most glorious in Himself. He makes Him 
righteous. Through him He makes others righteous. And 
who then can fail of the sense, " If children^ also heirs, heirs of 
God, but joint heirs with Christ, if we even suffer with Him, 
that we may also be glorified together ? " 

Christ, as a man, though a worm, helped Himself, just as we 
all must do, though saved by the Spirit. His self-help came 
with the result of suffering, just as it must come to all of us ; 
for we are told by the apostle, " We must through much tribu- 
lation enter into the kingdom of heaven " (Acts 14: 22). This 
needs to be very plain. Christ's sufferings were " unto blood, 
striving against sin" (Heb. 12 : 4). This was His sacrifice. 
He endured a thousand deaths conquering temptation ; and as 
He won the victory. His sufferings turned out all innocent, and 



250 ROMANS. 

He was able to hand them over as a sacrifice for His people. 
But Paul says, we have sufferings also. He speaks of " filling 
up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ " (Col. i : 
24) ; and in the present passage he expounds that perfectly. 
Christ's forensic object was to atone for men. Christ's per- 
sonal object was to '^ learn obedience " (Heb. 5 : 8). He 
never sinned ; but He was horridly tempted. His object was 
to get rid of temptation. This is turned over in the Scriptures 
in many clarifying lights. He was sanctified (Jo. 10 : 36), 
He was made righteous (i Tim. 3 : 16). He was redeemed 
(Heb. 9 : 12). He was saved (Zech. 9 : 9, see Heb.). As 
the form in which He was to be glorified, it pleased God " to 
make the captain of our salvation perfect through suffering "" 
(Heb. 2 : 10). He was " made perfect " (Heb. 5:9); not 
that He was ever sinful, but that that could not be considered 
the highest shape of obtainable perfection which had to writhe 
in anguish through a ceaseless fight with iniquity. Now our 
sentence may be made plain. We have not to redeem any- 
body, and we are anything else than sinless. But on this very 
account Paul puts in that word tmzp. It is one of the six cases 
in the whole New Testament (see comment v. 9). For the 
very reason that we are so awfully carnal (i Cor. 3 : 3, 4), and. 
sin so much (Ec. 7 : 20), and that it is so hard to show as to 
^^ the thinking of the flesh (v. 6) just where and in what degree 
the saint differs from the world, Paul twrns again to that little 
particle. For just as it had been said, " If ye have even 
so much {ti-KEp) as tasted that the Lord is gracious " (i Pet. 2 : 
3) ; and as Paul had said, " If even (tmtp) a Spirit of God 
{oUei) has a lodgment in you " (v. 9), so now he says, not if ye be 
perfect, or not even if ye be prevailingly spiritual, but " if we 
even (elirep) suffer with Him^' that is, if the Spirit has a lodg- 
ment in us, and we enter into that desperate fight that He 
waged with His temptations. 

Do notice one thing : — That fight always conquers. " Re- 
sist the devil, and he will flee from you." That sinner who, 
as with the Trojan horse, has the Spirit within his citadel, ha 
matter in how miserable a corner he keeps it, yet if he will not- 



CHAPTER VIII. 251 

thwart it, but will begin to ^^ suffer with Christ,'' and take up 
His cross and resist, may dismiss fear. " Hoc signo vices " 
is written 011 his sky. And however desperate the fight, like 
his blessed Redeemer, he will be ^^ made perfects 

18. For I reckon that the sufiFerings of the present time 
are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall 
be manifested to us-ward. 

This is self-evident, and needs no comment. If Christ could 
" see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied," assuredly 
we can. " Compared " need hardly have been put in italics 
(E. v.); for though h^ia means only "worthy," yet the pre- 
position implies the contrast. 

19. For the eager looking of the creation expects the 
manifesting of the sons of G-od. 

The language means " looking " with head intent. Y^ricsLq 
has had almost every exposition. It cannot mean " the crea- 
ture " — *' the old man," for it is set in opposition not to " the 
new man," but to the saints. It cannot mean sinners, for it 
says they shall be "made free" (v. 21). It cannot mean 
the material world, for it is too serious for that ; nor can it 
mean the whole world, for that would include the saints. It 
cannot mean the whole universe, for that is not made subject 
to vanity. It seems most consistently to mean the whole 
world outside of its people. That would not imply that the 
animals that have ever lived are to be ^^ fjtade free" and glori- 
fied. It might be true, though we know nothing in that 
direction. If the chalk cliffs are to be restored to life, they 
would require half a planet for room to live in. We know 
literally nothing. All that it is necessary to suppose is, that 
this whole globe, which, long before man, by its spectacles of 
death seemed to be a token of his coming, will be renewed 
when he is renewed ; that the old star will break out in new 
forms of life ; that the golden age will at last be realized ; that 
the fountain of perpetual youth, which we expect for ourselves,, 
may be realized for brutes; that '' we, according to His promise, 
look for a new heaven and a new earth ; " and that while, with 



252 ROMANS. 

us, our great heirship with Christ will be, that therein shall 
dwell righteousness (2 Pet. 3 : 13), the whole ^^ creation'' shall 
have something to expect in "the manifesting of the sons 
of God." 

20. For the creation was made subject to vanity, not 
willingly, but on His account who subjected it, 21. With 
a ground for hope that the creation itself also shall be 
set free from the bondage of corruption into the liberty 
of the glory of the children of God. 

" Not willingly." How does this agree with the argument 
that an appetite for a thing is a pledge of its acquisition ? 
Does a brute acquire immortality? "But on His account." 

On account of God. For the sake of carrying out His grand 
administrations. Whether it be God, or whether it be Christ, is 
not a question : God is in Christ. Our great triumph is that 
Jesus Christ is God. He is the first born. All things else 
were begotten in Him. " Along with Him were all things 
created (Col. i : 16, Jm of accompaniment); not along with 
Him in time, for He was not born till long afterward ; but 
along with Him in the bundle of the decree. He was to be 
far above principality and power, and, therefore, the universal 
whole was schemed to suit Him. He was the central Per- 
sonage ages before Him. To express it differently, in the 
order of plan " He was before all things" (Col. i : 17 ; see 
also Jo. I : 30 ; Rev. 13 : 8). " All things stood together in 
Him " (ib.). In fact. He is more than God, for He is the 
plenary God and that Sacrificial Man that is necessary to the 
world's redemption. 

22. For we know that the whole creation groans and 
has birth-pangs together until now. 

This ought to soften us toward brutes, for it is our fault, 
not theirs, that they have a life of suffering. If it is a new 
fauna that is to be blest, the old can have no compensation. 

23. But not only so, but even ourselves also, who have 
the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan 
"Within ourselves, waiting for adoption, to wit, the re- 
demption of our body. 



CHAPTER VIII. 253 

" Not only so." Not only is the earth, which has been 
cursed by man, to be renovated, and that on the judgment 
day, ^'' the day of the manifestation of the sons of God'' (v. 19), 
but the earthy part of these " sons " is to be renovated also. 
Only the wicked are to perish. In this world adoption is a 
quasi and singular thing. And, therefore, the Bible uses the 
words over again for the great hereafter. '' Brethren, now 
are ye the sons of God " (i Jo. 3:2); and yet listen to Paul 
when he speaks of " waiting for adoption." <' Now ye are 
clean," says Christ, but the very speaker had ages to 
pass before He could "• present (them) without spot or wrin- 
kle" (Eph. 5. 27). So of all our joyful adjectives. We are 
*' redeemed" (i Pet. i : 18), but it may take thousands of 
years to speed on the real " day of redemption " (Eph. 4 : 
30). This habit of the Bible is almost universal. We are 
^' righteous " (Lu. i : 6), and undoubtedly that means a 
brightening of our conscience ; but so far is it from a deserv- 
ing of the name, that Paul does not hesitate to throw us all 
back in strictness of speech and to say, " We, through the 
Spirit, wait for the hope of righteousness by faith " (Gal. 5 : 5). 

And so in the present passage. First of all, we have but 
"the first fruits of the Spirit." Paul has been full of those 
expressions. We are "sealed" by the Spirit (Eph. i : 13). 
We have "the earnest of our inheritance " (Eph. i : 14). He 
treats the case hypothetically by the use of that little particle 
(eiTrep). ^'If the Spirit have even a lodgmeiit in you " (Rom. 8 : 9). 
And Peter takes up the case with even more emphasis, for he 
calls us " new-born babes ;" he recommends to us " milk " and 
not strong meat ; and he brings in that word tlizep as we have 
seen, and he describes all that a Christian reaches in this world 
by the expression, " If ye have even tasted that the Lord is 
gracious" (i Pet. 2 : 3). 

This makes all our passage easy. " Ourselves also who have 
the first fruits of the Spirit,'' and who have, therefore, a huge 
" body " of ''''flesh," that has in it our noblest faculties, yearn- 
ing like the solid earth for some relief, ** groan within our- 
selves, waiting for adoption," that is for sure-enough " adop- 



254 ROMANS. 

tion^'' that which might look worth while in a divine "son;** 
to wit (and this is the great pregnant portion of the passage), 
to wit, the enrighteousment of our whole selves ; to wit, the 
filling with the Spirit of all our fleshly tastes ; to wit, our hav- 
ing a ^' spirit-body " where now we have a "soul-body;" to 
wit (i Cor. 15 : 44), our appetites being attuned to a Godly 
centre of our life ; to wit, our conscience being made perfect ; 
to wit, our '' old man " being destroyed in that which gives it 
its name, and having "redemption" in its splendid powers, 
our " whole body being full of light " (Matt. 6 : 22). 

Some would put in the word "/z^//" before the word " adop- 
tioHy' and their reason is that we are adopted already (v. 15), 
and their justification is that though adoption is the common 
word, yet ^^ waiting " has more in it than mere expectancy — that 
it means waiting long or " waiting " the time out to the very end. 
That would justify ^'- full'' if it were necessary, or if it agreed 
with the usage of Paul. But he employs this same word to 
express waiting " for the Saviour" (Phil. 3 : 20), or waiting for 
His coming (i Cor. i : 7); he speaks of those who look for Him 
(Heb. 9 : 28), which advent of Christ is not partial now and 
^'■fulV hereafter ; and moreover, as we have abundantly seen, 
" adoption " and " righteousness " and " life " and " cleansing " 
and " redemption " are all spoken of in this double way, as 
though they all belonged to us now, and as though they all 
came to us fresh in the day of Jesus. 

24. For we were saved in the shape of hope— 

This is one of those *' material datives " which imply the 
constitutive substance of the thing talked of. '' By faith Abel 
offered unto God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain " 
(Heb. II : 4). His faith was the essence of the sacrifice (see 
Com. on 6 : 10, 11). "We were saved." Notice the aorist. 
At a certain date in the past, salvation accrued to us, but, in 
signal features, it was " in the shape of hope." 

24.— But hope seen is not hope ; for what he sees, who 
hopes for ? 

It is not God Almighty that we shall "see," or heaven in any 



CHAPTER VIII. 255 

material existence other than this planet. We know not where 
heaven will be with any certainty. And when we point up- 
ward we are only gesticulating. For upward does not mean 
the same thing two hours together, or in a winter or a sum- 
mer orbit of our planet. Perhaps children should not as much 
imagine a heaven " up in the sky." Gabriel does not see God. 
He sees Him morally, and that is the meaning of our text. 
When the Spirit only lodges with us ; when we are ovAy sealed 
by the Holy Ghost ; when we have the earnest and the hpxh 
(Heb. 6 : i), and the ^^ first fruits'' only of eternal life ; when 
we have only so much as tasted that the Lord is gracious, then 
*'^ we are saved (only) in the shape of hope ; " but when right- 
eousness bursts forth ; when the whole body of sin is re- 
deemed ; when God ^^ appears " as John calls it, and we become 
like Him, because in John's ethical account of it we see Him as 
He is, then all this text is made clear. " Hope that is seen, is 
not hope." Our poor little piety that sees very little, is the 
seed of ^'' hope'' " What he sees, who hopes for?" If we 
saw God in His purity, we would be past"^^<?." Gabriel 
has no other heaven but that. The *' faith (that) is sweetly 
lost in sight," is that which David longed for : — " One thing 
have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may 
dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold 
the beauty of the Lord and to enquire in His temple " (Ps. 27 : 
4). Heaven will bring to us parts and powers and passions 
that will be very noble, and physical ease that will be very 
sweet, but it will bring to us no sight of God except Christ, 
and no vision of the " Invisible King" (i Tim. i : 17) except 
that sight of His holiness which will make us like Him, and 
which we are to begin now to seek after with all our hearts. 

25, But if we hope for what we see not, we wait with pa- 
tience. 

We'are to cultivate the right sort of ^'' hope." We are to 
*' look for and haste unto the coming of the day of God " (2 
Pet. 3 : 12) ; not by the knife of the suicide, but by visions of 
the King. And we are to have long endurance in our gaze ; 



256 ROMANS. 

for " hope " is a principle of courage ; and ** if we hope for 
what we see not, we wait with patience." 

26. And likewise also the Spirit takes hold along with 
our weakness, for what we pray for we know not as we 
ought ; but the Spirit itself makes intercession for us, with 
unutterable groanings. 

"Likewise." That is, in the same line of eagerness and 
hope. "The Spirit also." Not. simply the original Spirit 
which the lost have, and even the devil. And not even the 
Christian's Spirit, that is, original conscience sanctified by a 
spirit of grace. For this much of God's Holy Spirit is not 
enough, but must have an ally outside taking hold along with 
the grace already possessed. But the Spirit here implied is 
the whole glorious God, who must do much more for us, or we 
shall yet be lost. The advance of this sentence is that the 
last spoke of waiting, this speaks of pushing, and, above all, by 
that splendid engine of advance, the exercise of prayer. 

The obstacle to our advance is " our weakness." That 
simply means the " weakness " of our conscience. It exists in 
hell. The fiends are so weak that they never can be saved. 
The world was equally weak, '^ For when we were yet weak, 
Christ died for us " (Rom. 5 : 6). We are still ^^ weak'' since 
the death of our Redeemer ; *' for what the law could not do in 
that it was weak through the flesh,'' Christ has done by His di- 
vine efficiency, and now (wonder of all) we are still weak, and 
this brings us to the meaning of our sentence. 

And why should we start at this ? Christ was weak. Under 
the cover of the English version it is half concealed from us 
that He was compassed about with ^'weakness " (Heb. 5 : 2). 
And it was ^'weakness" of conscience. The conscience He 
would have derived from Mary would have been too weak to 
hold Him up from sin, but the Spirit took hold along with His 
weakness j that is His glorious Godhead added to His con- 
science enough conscience more, barely to cope with His temp- 
tations to sin. 

We see then what ^^ our weakness " is. It is not a weakness 
of fiends, for we are men. It is not a weakness of man un- 



CHAPTER VIII. 257 

visited, for we have Christ. It is not a weakness of the ene- 
mies of Christ, for we are. His friends. And yet, alas ! it is not 
the weakness of Christ, for He was held up against all iniquity 
by the Spirit, while we have but tasted of His grace, and are too 
weak not to be always sinning. 

This " weakfiess " Paul presents in the same magnificent 
way in which he presented ''^righteousness'' (i : 17). It is a 
want of knowledge. Just as " righteousness " is begotten in the 
soul by having '^ the righteousness 0/ God revealed," so sin is 
begotten in the soul by having " the righteousjiess of God" hid- 
den. Paul has just been saying that " if we hope for that we 
see 7iot, thendowewith patiejicewait for it" (E. V., v. 26). What 
troubles the saint is darkness. And, therefore, in that 
enginery of prayer he is ever ready to cry, '* We cannot order 
our speech by reason of darkness " (Job 37 : 19). Light, 
therefore, is the great cynosure of prayer. And the difficulty 
of prayer is that I do not "know" the great thing I want to 
ask for. If I knew light it would be mine already. And, 
therefore, Paul, who has gone into the same reasonings about 
sin, and said, " W^hat I do, I know not" (7 ; 15), gives prayer 
the same magnificent description. The only thing worth pray- 
ing for is holiness ; and the difficulty of asking for it is that 
we do not know it. If we knew it, we need not ask. But God, 
who knows it perfectly, gets into our hearts, and, as a Spirit, 
makes intercession within us, not telling us anything, that is, 
not adding to our gospel facts, but warming what we have into 
life, making our thoughts, so far as they are utterable, no 
different from before, but rousing them into "unutterable" 
sighings, and as we ask for knowledge, giving it to us, making 
us know that we- have the petitions that we desire of Him, 
and, whereas in " our weakness " as believers we " know not as 
we ought" the gift we ask, showing it to us, though it be 
" unutterable" as the very way of giving it. 

'*As7ue oi^ght " belongs to knowing, not to praying. We do 
know holiness. Even Satan knows it in the measure of his 
conscience. But we do not know it " as (/ca^d — in the measure 
that) we ought" 



258 ROMANS. 

The Spirit interceding^ that is, taking hold along with what 
conscience we have, enlarges the circle of our prayer ^ and in- 
stigates it to further knowledge. 

27. And He who searches the heart, knows what is the 
thinking of the Spirit, because it makes intercession for 
the saints through God. 

This for man is not without its comfort. It is a simple inti- 
mation. If it is God that prays, remember that it is God that 
answers. " He who searches the heart knows what is the 
thinking of the Spirit." Surely ; for it is Himself. "Because 
it makes intercession for saints," not in words, nor in 
thoughts, nor in utterances distinguishable from the con- 
science — not in syllabled speech, like that of Balaam, not 
in things ^^unutterable'' (v. 26) because not understood — 
but by *' the exceeding greatness of His power " (Eph. i : 19) 
in quickening the conscience, and giving it, warmer and clearer, 
the moral sense that is possessed even by the wicked. We 
call ^^ the Spirit'' "it" because the Scripture calls it so (Jo. 
14 : 17 ; see the Greek). In this particular text it makes the 
rhetoric better. The Spirit is really God (2 Cor. 3 : 17). 
The Spirit in unnumbered cases is really man (Jo. 13 : 21 ; i 
Cor. 14 : 15). It is subject to the same laws as other language. 
And we may say "/V" (E. V. & Re.), or we may say "ZT*?" 
(E. V. & Re.), without endangering His proper Deity. 

The italics in the sentence (E. V. & Re.) are more than 
usually unfortunate. Kara Qzbv takes in no more ^^will" (E. V. 
& Re.) than any other attribute. Power and love and wisdom 
are just as operative. God as a totality is concerned in 
prayer ; and " through God " (see i Pet. 4 : 6) gives us to 
understand that as Christ was David's seed ^' through flesh" 
(1:3) and God's seed " through Spirit " (i : 4), so prayer is made 
genuine " through God," and is blessedly answered because God 
is in it. ^^For saints" means literally ^^for holy people " This is 
for the same convenience of brevity as the words '' righteous " 
or " those who love God " (v. 28). Who loves God ? These 
words are all on a level, and refer to that slender beginning of 



CHAPTER VIII. 



259 



holiness which comes from a mere lodgment of the Spirit (v. 9), 
and answers to that expression of a more recent text which 
speaks of " the first fruits " (v. 23) of that power in sinners. 

28. And we know that with those who love God He 
works as to all things for good; with those who are 
the called according to a purpose. 

The best MSS. put in the word " God" (6 deb^) after " works 
with," so that the text would read, " God works together as 
to all things for good, with them that love God." If we 

could adopt that Greek, there would be no doubt about the 
meaning. But while the MSS. which give it are the best 
(A B H), those which do not give it are the most (C D F K L). 
We care very little, however, about the text ; for the repetition 
of the word *' God" would mar the rhetoric of the sentence, 
and that " God" is meant as the nominative of ^^ works " is 
proved in two particulars : — first, that such respectable MSS. 
thought so, and, second, from the whole cast of the sense. 
Paul is stating the astonishing nearness of the Almighty. He 
is about to sum it up presently by the outcry, " If God be for 
us, who can be against us?" (v. 31). He had stated it 
strongly before by saying that Christ was in us (v. 10). And, 
reasoning forward from that, he has said that God is so within 
that He actually prays in the heart of the believer (v. 26); so 
" makes intercession " within, that He actually knows the prayers 
because they are His own (v. 27); creating a philosophical 
provocation to say, Yes, and He not only prays in our spirits, 
but He actually does everything else in the believer. He does 
not commit his sins, but as Paul most dexterously phrases His 
influence, "We know," that is, it is a corollary of our being 
heirs with Christ, " that as to all thi?igs lie works for good with 
thefu that love God." That preposition aw i^^with") reigns in 
this chapter. We are ^' heirs with Christ" (pvyKKrjpovoiioL, v. 17). 
'■'■We suffer with Him" and '^ are glorified together" (still <m>, 
V. 17). Presently we are to hear that we are to be *' conformed 
to the i??iage of His son " (E. V., (Tviufi6p<f)oi, v. 29). Paul tells us 
that we are ** quickened together with Christ " (E. V., GvCuoTroieu. 



26d ROMANS. 

Eph. 2:5; Cor. 2 : 13), referring to His rising as we rise out 
of the grave of spiritual ruin. And now we are told that "^j 
to all things God works with " the believer (owep-yei) even more 
than He prays with him (vs. 26, 27); for in prayer He chiefly 
elevates his conscience, but in more secular " things," He 
shapes and guides him '■^ for good" 

No sweeter text has been found in the Bible than the old 
(E. v.); no truer; or more legitimately used, if it were the 
sense ! But, in the first place, *' all things [do not] work " 
(E. v.). It is an imperfect rhetoric. And, in the second 
place, God does " work" and in a most glorious sense, " along 
with " ipvv) each fact as to the believer. 

" Called." This word occurs eleven times in the New Tes- 
tament Greek : twice with Christ, and each time unfavorably^ 
" For many are called, but few chosen " (Matt. 20 : 16 ; 22 : 
14). The nine other cases are all favorable. Seven of them 
are with Paul, and one each with Tude and John. The 
meaning must be settled by the context. Here it is Kara 
Trpddeatv. When a man lights a candle, he does it for '*a pur- 
pose" (Matt. 5 : 15). When a man cuts a stone, he does it 
for a building (i Pet. 2: 5). When God is working with a 
believer as to all things, He has a use for him. *' That in me 
first," Paul says, " Christ might show forth all long suffering " 
(i Tim. I : 16). We are "called" therefore, " according to '* 
a scheme (Trpodeaiv). 

29. For whom He did foreknow, them He also planned 
out beforehand in conformity with the image of His Son, 
that He might be a first-born among many brethren. 

This text is strangely dexterous. The word "image" is a 
gem. When I was * planned," Christ was "planned" also. 
And it will be remarked that this very word opi^o is used first 
for Paul and second for Christ, in this very epistle. Paul is 
said, first of all, to be " set apart" unto the Gospel {a<i>o)ptajuevog, 
I : i), and then Christ, in the fourth verse, to be "determined 
upon as God*s Son" (dpcadivro^) , the Greek being absolutely the 
same except in respect of prepositions (i : i, 4). 

Christ, therefore, having been "planned" from everlasting, 



CHAPTER VIII. 261 

was the most illustrious personage with the x\lmighty ; in fact, 
He was an intended Self * in a coming incarnation. Hosts 
of Scriptures come up into the idea. The plan of Him cen- 
tred all other plans. The thought is constantly repeated. He 
was the Alpha (Rev. 1:8). Cheops was hoary with age when 
He came into the manger, but not a stone of it was laid without 
a reference to Him. " With Him were all things created " 
(Col. I : 16), the meaning of which is explained by 6td (see 
com. i: II, 12). That is, the whole plan of the universe was 
built upon Him. To redeem men He was " slain from the 
foundation of the world," that is Kara npodeaiv; and when it 
was determined that we should be ^^ ca//ed," it had to be "in 
conformity with the image of (that) Son," He Himself 
existing at that time only as an ^^ image j" but an ^^ image" so 
strangely grand, that that " image " must be formed as 
necessary to any other ; an " image " so distinct, that it had a 
glory with the Father "before the world was" (Jo. 17 : 5, see 
Augustine in /oc.)\ and an ^' image" so prefigurative of the 
possibilities of redemption, that, unless He was, we could 
not be, so that He was, in the most vital sense, "the first 
born among" us, and '' t/ie first born of the whole creation" 
(Col. I : 15). 

Now, this gets along, as Augustine beautifully pictures it 
to us, without remembering that He was the Almighty. But 
when we remember that He was God incarnate, the " image " 
even of His flesh becomes radiant with its large intentions. 
All power was to be given to Him (Matt. 28 : 18). He was 
to be head over all things for us (Eph. i : 22). He was to sit at 

* Moses said, Who shall I say sent me? and God said, "I will be 
WHAT I WILL BE," Say unto the children of Israel, " I will be hath sent 
me unto you" (Ex. 3: 14). This is the literal Hebrew. Jehovah (Ex. 6: 
3) is but the third person singular instead of the first, and ought long ago to 
have been recognized as "He will be ; " Messianic in the very name, as 
predictive of the incarnation of the Most High. It was the " imag-e" 
of this Jehovah as one day constituted God %nd man, that we were *^ to be 
conformed to;** not as " only-begotten" (Jo. 3 : 16), God and man, but in 
a subordinate sense one with Him, "that He migrh,t be a first-bom among- 
xnany brethren." 



262 ROMANS. 

the right hand of God, even as to His human nature the 
Chief Executive (Mark 14: 62); and we are '•^planned'' in 
conformity with Him so vitally, that the ^^ image'' of Christ 
had to be formed in Heaven before we could be dreamed of 
as ransomed, and before the possibilities of new-born saints 
could be conceived even in the Almighty's wisdom. 

It will be seen, therefore, that this is not a separate brochure 
upon the decrees, but a natural sequence to previous ideas. 
Paul has put us very close to our Creator. God breathes for 
us our prayers, and " works with us as to all things for good.'* 
With such intimacy there must be overshadowipg designs. 
Paul says we are ourselves designs. The whole universe 
once stood as an ^^ image." We were images. Every one of 
those images has been distinctly realized. But among those 
images one was the core of the creation. To that " image " 
all others had to be conformed. And not one of us could be 
thought of except " in conformity with " Him without whom 
life from death would be a simple mockery. 

The expression, " Whom He did foreknow," is not a dif- 
ficult one. The foreknowledge of a Creator agrees with His 
predestination^ and yet the predestination of a Creator is not in 
contempt of His foreknowledge. God cannot do everything. 
Before He can predestine He has to look ahead as much as any 
creature. In other words, there is only one plan possible for 
the Almighty. Among all the creative myriads there is but 
one whole that is the wisest and the best. Our Creator has 
struck for that. He has strangely little license, this God of 
ours ; and has been walled in unchangeably since the depths 
of the everlasting. He has every license, and does what He will 
in the eternal ages. But what He wills to do is as fixed as 
fate, for there is but one wisest thing for the All Wise, and He 
was wise from everlasting. *' Whom He did foreknow," there- 
fore, is I myself, if I belong to Christ, for I am the only pos- 
sible man to stand in my lot and do my service. God glanced 
down the age and saw atl this before He ^^ planned (mo) out." 
Moreover His foreknowledge is distinguishable from His 
decree in another eminent light. I am not all He would have 



CHAPTER VIII, 263 

liked me to be. The Deity that could say, " Oh that thou 
hadst known " (Lu. 19 : 42) ; or the Deity that could say, 
" How often would I have gathered " (Lu. 13 : 34) ; or the 
unforced artificer who could nevertheless declare, " What 
could have been done more ? " (Is. 5:4); the God who could 
weep over Jerusalem, or of whom it could be said. He " will 
have all men to be saved " (i Tim. 2: 4), needs YW?> foreknowl- 
edge in its glance to see if the way be clear for mercy ; for 
while " it is the glory of Gods to cover over a thing, it is the 
honor of Kings to search out a matter " (Prov. 25 : 2). The 
" image "-making had to be carried so far that Christ himself 
was an '^ image." The whole KrioLg had to be an ^^ image'' 
that could agree together ; and, though Christ was the Head, 
He himself had to be looked at in foreknowledge, before 
He could be shaped into a decree, which is the idea seized 
upon by Peter^" who verily ^^s foreknown {Trpoeyvucfihov) before 
the foundation of the world" (i Pet. i : 20), a fact that must 
occur in God before the ^' Image" could be framed ^^ in con- 
formity with" which saved souls could be predestined also. 

30. But whom He planned out beforehand, them He 
also called, and whom He called, them He also made 
righteous, but whom He made righteous, them He also 
made glorious. 

"Called" is no longer the participle (v. 28), but the main 
body of the verb. We have looked in vain in the New Testa- 
ment for any other sense than effectually '^called" "Made 
righteous " would then mean sanctified. Paul says : *' But ye 
are washed, but ye are justified, but ye are sanctified " (E. V., 
I Cor. 6 : 11). There it is exceedingly awkward to imagine 
anything else but that all the terms mean sanctification. Paul, 
a tasteful rhetorician, if that were not the case, would have 
thrust a forensic term between two that are subjective. But, 
alas for the skill of the apostle ! in the present text it would 
be worse. If make righteous means to hand over to us the 
righteousness of Christ, then Paul would speak of calling first, 
and that afterward. How is that for a theology ? If the sen- 
tence read, " Whom He did predestinate, them He also justified; 



264 ROMANS. 

and whom He justified, them He also called ; and whom He 
called, them He also sanctified (for surely there should be some 
place for that) ; and whom He sanctified, them He also glori- 
fied," the argument might be the other way. But with no 
place for sanctification at all, unless making righteous means 
making holy ; and with calling put first ; and with justification 
put after calling, it is as if a sentence read this way : " Whom 
He called, them He also redeemed." It is these '' Horae Pauli- 
nae " intimations that form obiter most powerful arguments. 
" Foreknew^'' first ; ^^ planned,'' second ; *' called,'' third ; 
" made righteous," fourth (a process not like calling, sudden, 
but lasting to the end of life) ; and then " made glorious " in 
an eternal heaven ; that boxes the compass of our experience ; 
but would leave a terrible chas n if '' inade righteous " did not 
answer to our subjective change. 

31. What shall we then say to these things ? If God be 
for us, who is against us ? 

We have remarked upon this already (vs. 9-1 1). He who 
lives in us (Gal. 2 : 20) ; He who is so morally ours that He 
moves within us what we propose and feel (Phil. 2 : 13) ; He 
who prays when we pray (vs. 26, 27), and actually " works with 
those who love Him as to all things for good" (v. 28) ; and, now, 
to take up the last texts, who schemed our " image " when He 
schemed the '' image of His Son" and schemed ours " in con- 
formity with " His (v. 29), hardly need add a feature to the 
words of the apostle. We are God's men, " known " and 
^^ planned" and '' called" and " sanctified " and ''^glorified" No 
higher unity of interest can easily be conceived. And Paul 
may well exclaim, " What shall we then say to these 
things ?" and add as the sum of our escape, " If G-od be 
for us, who is against us ? " 

** C^;z ^^" (E. V.) undoubtedly mars the sense. It is like 
" bountifully " (E. V.) put into one of the Psalms. David cries,' 
" Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for Jehovah has been deal- 
ing for thee ! " (Ps. 116 : 7). What does ''''bountifully "add to 
a sense like that ? Paul asks, " Who is against us ? " and it is 
amazing how deep the question ! The ^^ called" has no ene- 



CHAPTER VIII. 265 

mies except his own wicked heart : and the apostle goes on to 
say that. Not a/j;t«^ J^ot dwd/ze^f. Satan himself is a friend to 
the believer ; for Paul has explained it, " God works together as 
to all things for good with them that love Him " (v. 28). 

32. Here is something stronger too, as expressed by the 
word ye (indeed). Not only have we the assertions of the 
Almighty, but what might we augur ourselves ? — 

3 2. He indeed who spared not His own Son, but delivered 
Him over for us all, how shall He not with Him freely give 
XLS all things ? 

Before, we had the make-up of the ''''image,'' and the infer- 
ence ran that as the " image " of Christ was of one foreknown 
3ind predetermined diS a great Deliverer, so His people must be 
*^ planned out'' (v. 29) ^' in conformity with " that great design. 
But here he plunges farther down. What could God be 
thinking of in ransom, unless His will was to give us the largest 
grace ? " He who spared not His own Son, but delivered 
Him over for us all, how shall He not with Him freely give 
lis all things?" 

33. And mark you, says Paul, He can carry out His designs. 
It may be different for other worlds, but here He is " in the 
way of judgment " (Is. 26 : 8). For once He can be " righteous, 
und yet make righteous" (3 : 26). He can lift the curse of sin- 
fulness. What devil (/. e. accuser) can be '■^against us" 
(V. 31) ? 

33. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect ? 
God, who makes righteous? 34. Who is he who con- 
demns ? Christ Jesus who died ? but rather who was raised 
from among the dead ; who is at the right hand of God ; 
who also makes intercession for us ? 

The interrogatory form of the thirty-fifth verse leads us to 
choose the same for all these other verses. Why not ? 

And now the advantage of the simple Greek of the thirty- 
first verse more specifically appears. " Who can be against us ? " 
(E. V.) would be very expressive, but " who is against us " is 
much more so. Paul has brought the Christian into the most 
intimate relations with the Almighty. He lodges vs\ him (v. 9). 



266 ROMANS. 

Paul has uttered that strange speech that when we pray, God 
prays. He '' makes intercesssion {within) us'' (v. 26). He has 
enlarged that idea. And on the memory that if He prays in us 
He doubtless does everything else that is excellent, he makes 
out of it a general proposition that " He works with (us) as to 
all things for good'' (v. 28). And then the transition is easy, 
that we are ^^ planned out " eternally in conformity with an 
original plan made for our Redeemer (v. 29). It is on the 
back of this that he asks, " Who is against us ? " Our present 
sentences take that interrogatory to pieces. " Who," for ex- 
ample, " shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? " 
Why, only God could do it, and He is the very person 
who is busy in these intimate relations. He '''■planned (us) 
out " (v. 29), and He is busy making us righteous " in confor- 
mity with " our Surety. " Who is he who condemns ? " Why, 
it only could be that Surety Himself. Could it be " Christ 
who died," while He is positively busy for our salvation ! Paul 
goes over the points of His redemption. He ""died;*' nay 
*< rather was raised from among the dead." Had He " died" 
in that awful shape in which temptation threatened (Heb. 5 : 
7), what a final catastrophe ! " but " He was enabled to resist 
temptation, and by the might of His Godhead was " raised 
from among the (spiritually) dead" (6 : 4). Under stern ago- 
nies He fought and conquered, and Paul goes on with his list, 
" He is at the right hand of G-od ; " and in this place of Chief 
Executive " who is against us " if He is ^^ for us ? " He is not 
only God's " hand'' betokening the instrument of His general 
power, but He is God's " right hand" for His noblest adminis- 
tration. The Psalmist calls him so.* And, therefore, the 
transition is easy that He who in so many things is interceding 
for us, cannot, in the nature of the case, be the one to condemn 
us. 

" Also." The Spirit intercedes (v. 27) and Christ intercedes, 
and in different fashions. The 'Spirit, that is the Most High 

* ' That thy beloved ones may be delivered save thy Right Hand and 
answer me"(Ps. 60: 5). The introduction of '' with" {E.Y.) in italics 
ruins everything. 



CHAPTER VIII. 267 

God, intercedes unutterably, that is by warming our conscience^ 
and raising our desire when we pray. And Christ intercedes 
doubly ; first, by being that Most High God who is the Spirit, 
and, second, by His sacrificial work, which only could have 
been performed by our weak humanity. 

It is in these sentences that the fact appears that the use of 
this whole passage to prove the doctrine of ^^ persevei-ance'' is 
utterly unwarrantable. The persons spoken of are " God^s 
electy The doctrine of '' election " itself has been used as a 
proof of ^'■perseverance'' This is a strange fact in the history 
of the church. And yet what a miscalculation of the very 
meaning of ''''perseverance !'' The doctrine of ^'■perseverance'' 
is, that a converted man will persevere. What has that to do 
with election ? Our Saviour says that '' he that endureth to the 
end the same shall be saved " (Matt. 10 : 22). Now election 
provides for this, for God foreknows and plans beforehand 
all necessary conditions. But conversion ! Who shall tell by 
any such passage as this where that is to end ? The real 
meaning of the apostle closes with the thirty-first verse : — "//" 
God be for us." But God may cease to ^'^ be for us" if we 
quench Him or grieve Him away (i Thess. 5:19; Eph. 4 : 30). 
The persons spoken of are " God's elect" (v, ^Z)- They are 
sinners whom He sees all the way out into His Kingdom. 
And He is not speaking of sin, and its power again to destroy 
the sinner, but He is speaking of grace, and how invulnerable 
while it is kept in the heart. " If a man abide not in me he is 
cast forth as a branch " (Jo. 15 : 6). He is not speaking of 
sin, but of all other things that could be thought of against us. 

35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ— 

that is from Christ's love to us, as appears from the thirty- 
seventh verse ? Our love to Christ, however, is so interwoven 
in it that we need not be very particular. 

35.— Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or 
famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 

This is a corollary of the twenty-eighth verse, which says 
that " He works together as to all things for good with them 



268 ROMANS. 

that love God." We must cease to love Him, or else these 
are our blessings. Why, they are sent for His very " sake ! " 

36. As it has been written: 

For Thy sake are we given over to death all the day ; 
We are reckoned as sheep for slaughter. 

The '^ image'' (v. 29) in which we originally stood, offered 
itself to God shaded with all this "anguish." 

37. On the contrary, in all these things we are more 
than conquerors through Him who loved us. 

" Shall tribulation separate us ? " " On the contrary {a.TJ.a)^ 
etc., etc." "In all these things." How well that echoes 
the sentence (v. 28) ^^ as to all things for good ! '' "We are 
more than conquerors." To survive pain would be blessed. 
To get some advantage out of pain would be a success. To get 
all advantage and no mischief would be a victory. But to get 
just what we require, and to find in it God Himself working 
with us in our miseries for our supremest good, that is what 
Paul means when he speaks of our being " more than conquerors 
through Him who loved us." 

38. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor 
angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things 
to come, nor powers, 39. Nor height, nor depth, nor any 
other creation, shall be able to separate us from the love 
of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

"Death." That is the horror of the thirty-eighth verse. 
** Angels" and "principalities" could awaken no dissent. 
But Paul never hesitates about that word ^^ death.'' It is with 
him the ideal of spiritual ruin. Now if God be in us, " height" 
and " depth " and " things present " and " things to come " 
and " powers " can work in us no spiritual terror, but " death " 
in the terrible meaning of the apostle, how can that not separ- 
ate between us and the Almighty ? It can. But mark the 
language of the text. Can it " separate us from the love of 
God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Let us take the 
idea to pieces. Can future " death ? " No ; for we can never 
fall into it while *' love" continues. Can past ^' death ? " No ; 



CHAPTER IX. 269 

for it is out of that that '■^ love'' delivers us. Can present 
" death ? " No ; not while we " love " God. Paul has fenced 
his texts with great conditions. God's working " as to all 
things for good" is only " with them that love " Him. And this 
paean over "life" and ^^ death" is only possible if love con- 
tinues ; that is, if the Spirit of God, who never wilfully deserts, 
is not quenched (i Thess. 5 : 19) or trampled on (Heb. 10: 
29) by our own apostasy. 

The only thing that can ruin us is ourselves ; and Paul 
makes his list supereminently complete, for, after exhausting 
all the possibilities of earth, he throws in any other possibility 
of being, — " Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creation." 
That is, God can make nothing that will destroy His love, 
unless we have " counted the blood of the covenant wherewith 
we were sanctified an unholy thing, and have done despite 
unto the Spirit of grace " (Heb. 10 : 29). 

CHAPTER IX. 

1. I speak truth in Christ; I lie not; my consciousness 
bearing me witness in a Holy Spirit, 2. That I have 
great grief and continual sorrow in my heart. 

Israel, by the effect of all this reasoning, is thrown entirely out 
of icS most steadfast confidences, and given over, like any other 
false race, to perish. Paul has distinctly enounced " Circum- 
cision availeih nothi?ig" (Gal. 5:6); and, building upon con- 
ditions open to everyone, he has realized for the Jew that, 
instead of being saved by Abraham, Abraham himself was 
saved like any heathen (4 : 10). Paul chooses his speech, 
therefore, under the impulse of the profoundest pity, and 
yet with the knowledge that the Jew thought him a traitor, 
and, after his scourgings (2 Cor. 11 : 25) and stonings (Acts 
14 : 19), would count him entirely incapable of love to his 
race. " I speak truth in Christ." What he says in the third 
verse is so extreme that the declaration, " I lie not," which 
might seem unworthy of so great an apostle, appears the least 
that he could say. Jews were hungering for his blood. The 



270 ROMANS. 

man who had entered into their supremest service, sat with 
Gamaliel, steeped himself in the religious passions of his peo- 
ple, gloried in the law, and persecuted believers to the very- 
death, was now claiming, in the awful rebound of his martyr- 
doms, to have a love and to exercise a desire which almost 
takes our breath by its half profane intenseness : — 

3. For I could wish that myself were accursed from 
Christ for ray brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh; 

There is no art of Greek criticism that can turn this aside 
from what it most naturally would be made to mean. When, 
therefore, Paul cries out, '■'■ I speak truth in Christ,'' strengthen- 
ing his word as a man by that higher holiness which he has 
been explaining as coming from the Redeemer, and when he 
speaks of his " consciousness bearing witness " with him 
"in a Holy Spirit," it is not at all unimaginable that Paul had 
felt the necessity both in himself and among the Israelites of 
going down to the very inwardness of his thought before he 
trusted himself to such a sentence. There is a supreme 
shrewdness too. He is about to deal them more stunning 
blows. What could conciliate them more than this stern sen- 
tence, if they could only believe it ? 

Now what did it really mean ? Certainly not that he actu- 
ally wished to be accursed from Christ. And this touches 
the core of the difficulty. We have in another part of the 
Bible perhaps a stronger expression. Paul's speech is " I could 
wish," and King James is right in giving that sense to the im- 
perfect. But an earlier saint manifests no such reservation. 
With a mother's fondness Moses throws himself upon his 
knees and cries out, " This people have sinned a great sin." 
It is the same thing over again of a great saint warmed by 
Christ Himself into a miraculous affection. The Law-giver 
does not say, " / could wish,'' but he comes out boldly with the 
cry, " If now thou wilt forgive their sin — but if not, blot me, I 
pray thee, out of thy book " (Ex. 32 : 32). The solution, there- 
fore, is easy. It cannot be a mad speech, or two great ora- 
cles would not have made it. It cannot be an unmeasured 
speech ; for, though it is poured out generously by one, it is 



CHAPTER IX. 271 

limited in the way we see by the words of the other. When 
such a man as Moses prays, he reserves the possibiUty of the 
thing by force of his submission to his Master. But Paul dis- 
tinctly questioned the possibility. *' / could wish.'' As most 
commentators insist, he meant something by the choice of a 
tense. What could he mean ? He meant gloriously this : — 
that the pain and torment he could bear, and the damna- 
tion of hope, and eternal loss. That same, Moses had meant. 
Like the shadow of a ship upon the sea, he meant this shadow 
of his dying Master. Rather than my whole race should die, 
let me die. And he meant literally and theologically thus: 
Let me be eternally cursed as far as I innocently dare, rather 
than eternal infamy for all my people. 

^^ My consciousness " (v. i). The word in the Greek grew to 
mean " conscience " (E. V. & Re.), but had not entirely ripened 
that way in the days of the apostle. " Spirit " {ttvevixo) meant 
more squarely our moral sense (Jo. 4 : 23, 24 ; Eph. 4 : 23.) 
When Paul cried " I have lived in all good conscience " (E. 
V. & Re., Acts 23 : i), he would have cut his tongue out 
rather than mean it in our modern way. Peter calls " bap- 
tism " (that is, his figure there for conversion) not an entire 
washing, but an incipient one, or, as he graphically expresses it, 
^' the inquiry of a good consciousness after God " (i Pet. 3: 21). 
In fact this text of Paul (v. i) sheds light upon the whole use of 
the language. ** My consciousness bearing me witness ; " that is, 
my inward knowledge of my own heart, and that in its condi- 
tion as enlightened ^^ by a Holy Spirit." And that explains 
Peter's sense that " baptism " (used here, as circumcision is, 
Rom. 2 : 29, for a whole spiritual change) is not total cleans- 
ing, or " the washing away of the filth of the flesh," but only an 
incipient one, or, as we have just been saying, " the inquiry of 
a good consciousness ; " that is, differently stated, a sincere 
inquiry of the converted man " after God." 

Some passages come very near our meaning of ^^ conscience " 
(13 : 5; I Tim. 4:2); but in almost all there lingers the idea 
of mere sincerity (2 Cor. 1:12; see com. 2 : 15 ; 9 : i). 

" For I could wish.'' This is a proper force of the imper- 



272 ROMANS. 

feet ; and, as it has been intimated, since there is, therefore, 
an actual expression of reserve, what more easy than to allow 
that to be the possibility of its being innocent ? *' According to 
the flesh j " in contrast with a higher kinsmanship, which 
Christ greatly celebrates (Matt, 12 : 48, 49), and which Paul 
would have distinguished as kinsmanship according to the Spirit. 
Even if this sentence could be plausibly diverted, it would 
come bustling back. Its simple meaning would have the su- 
perior claim. '''•Anathema'' is too strong a word not to mean 
damnation. And the reserve of the imperfect is sufficient to 
shield Paul from having wished to be an eternal sinner. 

4. Who are Israelites ; whose is the adoption, and the 
glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and 
the worship, and the promises ; 5. Whose are the fathers, 
and of whom is Christ as to the flesh. He being over all God 
blessed for ever. Amen. 

It is the habit of the inspired writers to have no expletives 
in any sentence. When Matthew says, '' The book of the gen- 
eration of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham," 
he has a use for each expression. And in this list of Paul 
there is not a syllable that he does not intend as explaining his 
broken-heartedness in respect to his people. "Who are 
Israelites." The very name of their ancestor, '' A prince of 
God " {Israel, Gen. 32 : 28), made Paul sad. "Whose is the 
adoption.'* There is a lower and higher "-adoption'' There 
is a lower and higher covenant (Heb. 8: 8). More striking 
still, there is a lower and higher calling (see 8 : 28, 30). It is 
the habit of Holy Writ to strike a thought at a lower and 
higher plane. Just below we understand that " they are not 
all Israel that are of Israel" (v. 6). We have already seen 
that with certain worshipers " their circumcision has become un~ 
circumcision" (2 : 25). And within the limits of two chapters 
here, " adoption" which is first saving (8 : 14, 17), sinks to the 
level of the present verse. " Israel is my son " (Gen. 4:22) 
the Almighty says to Pharaoh. To Paul's people, therefore, 
belonged *' the adoption" and Paul yearned after them in all 
these traditional and vivid lights. And yet at the very mo- 



CHAPTER IX. 



273 



ment, Paul is building that most elaborate speech by which 
they are to be shown as utterly apostate. " And the glory." 
Though we write Ichabod, like the wife of Phinehas. "And 
the covenants ; " and these are all the solemn pledges of God 
to Israel. "And the giving of the law." Than which 
naught could be more special. " And the worship." It was 
all at Jerusalem. "And the promises; whose are the 
fathers." This would touch a Jew, for Abraham was the very 
God of their mythology. " And of whom is Christ," though 
he adds " as to the flesh," for Tamar and Bathsheba and that 
bad Manasseh were the ancestors of Christ ; and yet he 
brightens his enthusiasm by the gleam that this ill descended 
Redeemer was nevertheless a great tie to Israel, because, 
though coming of their blood, He was nevertheless " over all, 
Grod blessed for ever." 

This last expression, like the words " / could wish myself 
accursed from Christ " (v. 3), has been labored at with all sorts 
of adverse suggestion. But it always returns with a heavier 
demand, to its more rightful interpretation. It may be the 
strongest text of its teaching. But there must be some strong- 
est text. We cannot be sure that the sentence may not break 
off at irdvTuv (all), and the rest be a doxology, " God be blessed 
forever'' (Ewald, Fritzsche, Erasmus). But who can ever 
settle it ? How can we be sure that this is not a subterfuge ? 
And, as the vast majority of the church believe that Christ is 
really God, how can we ever forfeit our linguistic claims, or be 
dreamed of as turning away from the more simple exposition ? 

Such are the deep utterings of Paul, explaining his passion 
for the Jew people. 

6. But not so at all because the word of God has fallen 
to the ground ; for they are not all Israel who are of 
Israel. 7. Neither because they are Abraham's seed are 
they all children ; but in Isaac shall thy seed be called. 

"Not so." There is more in this than has usually been 
translated. The word is o\ov, so much, or so great. This neuter 
form is nowhere else in the Testament. Paul has uttered an 
astounding declaration. He now adds to it. He says, I did 



2 74 ROMANS. 

not speak of being accursed from Christ because my people 
have been wronged. Adopted and raised and singled out as 
they have been, it is not that they have been cruelly defrauded 
that awakes my interest ; or, expressing it all in his Greek, 
I make not such a speech {p\ov) as this "because the word of 
God has fallen to the ground." For he goes on to show 
that, in the original planning out, nothing was meant to occur 
but what had occurred. The illustrative and spectacular lan- 
guage that had been used they had abused into an error. 
*' Circumcision " had been spoken of as purity, and Abraham 
had been spoken of as though he could breed pious people. 
"They are not all Israel who are of Israel." They had 
had evidence that this '' Prince of God " was a wrong depend- 
ence. So of Abraham's " promises." God had indeed said, 
" I will establish my covenant (with) thy seed after thee for 
an everlasting covenant" (Gen. 17 : 7), but alas ! what a crazy 
promise if anything like a carnal '•'■ seed'' were dreamed of or 
intended. Abraham was to stand as the father of the faithful, 
not from begetting all that believed, and not from begetting 
no one else, but as Jabal was father of Nomads from leading 
the way in that race of herd-people. That reserves were 
meant was found in the very family of Abraham; for "neither 
because they are Abraham's seed are they all children; 
but in Isaac shall thy seed be called." 

8. That is, the children of the flesh, those same are not 
children of God; but the children of the promise are 
reckoned as a seed. 9. For this is the word of promise, 
According to this time will I come, and Sarah shall have 
a son. 

It was obvious from all that transpired that God intended 
great favor for the Israelitish people. But it would have 
been absurd in a hierarchy planned for righteousness, to give 
race-promises by birth, so that circumcision and a proper 
genealogy from their chief should make safe passage into an 
eternal Kingdom. 

The rule of exceptions, or, rather, the fact of a spiritual 
intention in the promises is apparent further : — 



CHAPTER IX. 275 

10. But not only so, but Rebecca also, having had com- 
merce with but one, even with our father Isaac, 1 1 . (For 
there being none born as yet, or any to do good or evil 
that the purpose of God according to an election might 
rest, it was not of works but of Him who calls), 12. It 
was said to her that the older should serve the younger ; 
13. Just as it has been written, Jacob I loved, but Esau 
I hated. 

"Wot only so, but Rebecca." Here was a different case. 
Before there were two wives, and Ishmael was the son of a 
bond-woman. But here there was a legitimate wife, and the 
children were from "one." And not only so, but they were 
twin children, and Esau was the first-born. So intricate a 
passage could hardly be made more simple. In Paul's time, 
two tests were appointed by the Rabbis for a man's redemp- 
tion : — first, Is he a Jew ? and, second. Is he circumcised ? 
(see Schottgen & Eisenmenger). Paul has been disposing of 
the one, and is finishing it in these very verses ; but in the 
very bosom of his speech he puts a parenthesis, which, in 
the most curt and yet most thorough fashion, replies to the 
other. He has been showing that God's promise to '■^ Abraham^' 
and then to " Sarah,'' and then to ^^Isaac,'' and then to ^' Jacob,'* 
was not squarely what they had conceived ; for the very Scrip- 
tures of the times revealed a reservation. They were not to 
Abraham, but only to Isaac. They were not to Isaac, but 
only to Jacob ; so that in the patriarchal history, " The 
children of the flesh, those same are not children of God." But 
Paul, dealing gently, and advancing gradually, comes toward 
the close of the chapter, to still stronger quotations. Let 
it be observed, he takes all from their own Scriptures. Not 
only was Ishmael turned against, though the seed of 
Abraham ; and Esau cursed, though born of Isaac, but an 
entire surrender is made of any difference, "/ will call them my 
people which were not my people'' (v. 25, fr. Hosea 2 : 23); and 
" though Israel be as the sand," only " a remnant shall be saved" 
(v. 27, fr. Is. 10: 22, 23). From the very law they worshiped in 
their churches, Paul, therefore, takes the proof that their super- 
stitious trust to their being Jews could not even have been 



276 ROMANS. 

relied upon by the ancient patriarchs. Packed-in, then, in this 
solid argument comes the parenthesis which has been hardly 
noticed. It is complete in itself. His main point was to show 
that some men, not Jews, had been prophesied of as saved^ 
and some men who were Jews had undoubtedly perished. 
Here comes in the other point. They must not only be Jews, 
but they must also be circumcised. And yet Paul says, That 
cannot be a proper reasoning in the case, for God declared 
that certain things should be, irrespective of any fact of cir- 
cumcision. ** For there being none born as yet, nor any 
to do good or evil tliat the purpose of God according to 
an election should have whereon to rest, it was not of 
works but of Him who calls." 

"None born." The word ''children'' (E. V. & Re.) is not 
in the Greek. "To do good." This is the aorist participle. 
" Rest." Literally " that the purpose of God according to 
an election might rest." But for the sake of the English 
we vary it a little ; "should have whereon to rest." "It 
was not." This seems to be the inspired apodosis. And yet 
it has been never noticed. It demonstrates itself to be, both 
by its sense and grammar. *'// was not of works." This 
whole arrangement was designed, and was irrespective of any 
question whether the man would get himself circumcised or 
no. It was the great scheme ** of Him who calls," and not 
of the existing Esau. And, if it will be noticed, the paren- 
thesis is the only part that deals with any ritualistic idea. 
Throw its contents away and all the rest is but a train of 
genealogic evidences. 

"It was said to her." This looks back for its connection 
to the tenth verse. " Jacob have I loved." This word is 
often used in Hebrew for the effects of love. Solomon uses it 
that way. " He that getteth wisdom loveth his own soul " 
(Prov. 19 : 8). It is the same with hatred. God did not love 
Jacob in any usual way before he was born ; neither did He 
hate Esau. All our usual speech is modified by the peculiari- 
ties of the believer. When we are called "-holy'' we have seen 
the strain upon the language (com. 2 : 6). When Jacob was 



CHAPTER IX. 277 

born he was a sinner. When he was born again he was a des- 
perately mean man. When any of us are converted, if God 
hates sin, it must be in a modified method that He can be 
thought of as loving anybody. Nor is this essentially difficult. 
Love of benevolence and love of complacency are the only 
moral loves ; and, therefore, there is vast imprudency of speech 
in characterizing "electing love" as though it belonged to 
either of these simple feelings. It is a pregnancy, meant to 
express a volume : and corresponds graphically with other 
sayings of the East. Wisdom cries, *' All they that hate me, 
love death " (Prov. 8 : ^6). She says, " I love them that love 
me" (v. 17); though how can wisdom love when it is a mere 
abstraction ? And so of the corresponding phrase, — " He that 
spareth his rod hateth his son" (Prov. 13: 24); or, more 
striking still, " Whoso is partner with a thief hateth his own 
soul" (Prov. 29: 24). " Electing /^z;^," therefore, is nothing 
but a pregnant word, including pure benevolence, including 
anticipated esteem as far as the objects of it shall be worthy 
of any, but including, above all, that effect, as though of " love^' 
v/hich results from the discovered possibility (see v. 22) of a 
soul's redemption. 

14. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness 
with God? By no means; 15. For He says to Moses, I 
Will have mercy on whomsoever I can have mercy, and 
I will have compassion on whomsoever I can have com- 
passion. 

The true philosophy of God includes the doctrine of His 
entire sovereignty. The sovereignty of God, which even infi- 
dels are inclining to under the modern naturalisms, has been 
frightfully marred by two additions, which men, otherwise 
good, have rashly made to it. One is, that God is sovereign 
over the actions of my mind, which He undoubtedly must be 
to be any God whatever, and shapes the choices of His sov- 
ereignty for the display of His perfections ; a gospel that is 
simply horrible. Hell must measure its depth of mischief. 
Atheists have attacked it with zeal, and then pretended that 
they were attacking Christianity. It has not a lineament of 



278 ROMANS. 

what is Christian. We are indeed taught that God does every- 
thing for display (Ps. 8 : i ; 29 : 9), but always as a gracious 
instrument. We are taught that this display is vital for our 
good (Ps. (iT^ : 2). We are taught, therefore, that it is an inter- 
mediate end (Eph. 3 : 10 ; Rom. 9 : 17). But that God 
damns a creature for display, and that such is His final, and 
therefore only, and, in itself, all-sufficient and absolutely posi- 
tive and necessary end, must sink any conceivable system. 
And, sadly enough, the same men who teach this wickedness, 
teach another, namely, that this self-adulating conduct of the 
universe is sovereign in the sense of naked, stark and absolute 
pleasure of the governing will. 

When we take the word " good pleasure," and put the word 
"mere" to it (West. Sh. Cat., Qu. 20), forgetting evdoKia, 
which it is meant to translate, and forgetting ''good," which 
might be a reminder of the truth, we form habits of theology 
which God's character will not bear. ^'T/ie righteousness of 
God'' is the very thing revealed in the Gospel (Rom. i : 17). 
In the very heart of our religion, viz., Christ ; and in the very 
object of Christ, viz., the salvation of the sinner ; and in the 
very secret of salvation, viz., the will of the Almighty, to plant 
a motive like display, and then to forget even that, in a stark 
supremacy and such do-as-you-please vital sovereignty of 
work, is really to throw away the beauty that converts, and to 
put in its place a horror which repels the perishing. 

Now the resting place of this mistake has been this ninth 
chapter of our English. Here are three verses. They stand 
apart, and undoubtedly they teach, if left to King James, this 
naked sovereignty of Heaven. Once more scholars have looked 
in upon them and left them the same (Re.). They must be 
very clear Greek, so any one would think. Moreover they 
are very different Greek ; so that if one were differently read, 
the others would still stand separate. Let me mention them 
together : — " I will have mercy on whom I (will) have 
mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I (will) have 
compassion" (v. 15). " So then it is not of him that willethy 



CHAPTER IX. 279 

nor of him that runneth^ but of God that showeth mercy " (v. 16). 
" Therefore hath He mercy on whom He will have mercy ^ and 
whom He will He hardeneth " (v. 18). 

Famous texts ! We open a Calvinistic creed, and there they 
are as a matter of course. Under the head of Predestination 
no sentences have been used so much. In long ages of agita- 
tion we have looked to them for the harsh and the bitter. 
What a sadness if it has been all a mistake ! And yet close 
criticism will find that such has been the fact. The first sen- 
tence is from the Old Testament (Ex. t^t^ : 19). Moses, after 
infinite condescensions, cries out, '' I beseech thee show me 
thy glory." God answers him. He translates what He will 
do into these two promises, " I will make all my goodness to 
pass before thee," and, as though it were the same thing, " I 
will proclaim (my) name, etc." — ; and then, with the vav of 
material fulfilment, he utters our text. I appeal to any fair 
mind whether it is morally possible that God meant that all 
His ^'goodness'' was exhibited to Moses, and all His great 
'"''name'' proclaimed, by telling him He would do as He 
pleased ! What is conspicuous is the solitariness of the aver- 
ment. There is nothing more. Man has grandly prayed, and 
God has gloriously answered. And now, t^at all the consum- 
mation is in this wilful speech, — I will do as I please ! is of 
all hermeneutical dreams the most flatly scandalous. ^^ Par- 
turiunt monies^ nascetur ridiculus mus" And though we do 
not pretend to shape Scripture, yet reason can cry a deter- 
mined halt, and say. The text, " This is my body," or the text, 
''Wash away thy sins," or the text, "I give unto thee the 
keys," or if there be any other conundrum in the Book, it shall 
be looked hard into for its sense, before we rest for a moment 
upon an absurd or wicked interpretation. 

Doing this service for Exodus we find that the established 
significance has been an almost wilful presumption. 

Let it be understood that there is no subjunctive in Hebrew. 
The sense of contingency is supplied by the future. " Can the 
rush grow up without mire ? " (Job 8 : 11) ; that is simply the 
future. Our translators say " can," there ; why not, therefore, 



2 8o ROMANS. 

in the infinitely weightier passage ? Elisha says to the woman, 
" Sojourn wheresoever thou canst sojourn " (E. V., 2 Kings 
8 : i). This is precisely parallel. Why do the translators un- 
derstand the subjunctive, and yet fatally forget it where it 
would have expounded and glorified the Almighty ? 

In a context where He was about to say, '' Only my back 
parts can be seen," meaning the results of my administrations, 
why did not the translators seize so important an assurance to 
our faith (especially as they seized the far less important in- 
stances), and when God had said '■'' I will make all my good- 
ness pass before thee," see how splendidly He was fulfilling 
that speech when He said " / will be gracious to whomsoever I 
CAN be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I ck^ show 
mercy ? " 

Taking refuge in the Greek, and saying, It is the Greek that 
is inspired (quoted as it is, and adopted now by the apostle), 
and insisting that the Greek (6c av with the subjunctive) must 
mean the future, will not answer at all. "Av really belongs to 6f, 
not to the subjunctive (Meyer, Alford, see Jelf, Gram. § 829 : 
i). The subjunctive always expresses contingency. We confess 
that in most instances the contingency is not potential. But 
that is as it happens. The contingency is explained by the 
subject matter. When the Septuagint says, " Will a flag grow 
without mire ? " (Job 8 : 11), or when the New Testament says, 
nug (j)vy7]TE (Matt. 23 : ;^^), our translators do not hesitate a mo- 
ment : — *' Can a flag grow without mire ? " (E. V,.) or, '' How 
can ye escape the damnation of hell ? " (E. V.). 

The reader must always judge the sense. " Bake that 
which ye will bake, and seethe that ye will seethe "(baa kav, LXX., 
Ex. 16 : 23). Here we would never say ^^ can,'' for they could 
stuff all into the fire at a stroke. But the contingency in an 
instant emerges as one of convenience. Then when David 
says, ** Seeing I go whither I may " (E. V., 2 Sam. 15 : 20), 
and when Elisha says, '' Sojourn wherever thou canst sojourn " 
(E. v., 2 Ki. 8 : i), the turn of the sense, though the future 
is the same, infallibly marks out the subjunctive differences. 

For how else can we arrive at any meaning on the part of 



CHAPTER IX. 281 

the apostle ? Dr. Hodge, upon the harshest ground of arbi- 
trariness, says that Paul is simply stating what God claims ; 
because we cannot go back of that. He does as He pleases, 
and simply is saying so. But in that we forget that Paul has 
volunteered an explanation. To say that he is shifting the re- 
sponsibility to the Old Testament Scriptures is absurd, for it 
is an Old Testament Scripture that is in question (v. 13). It 
would be defending one speech of God by obtruding a worse. 
That is what tempts the infidel. Therefore Alford holds 
that what Paul is meaning, is, that what influences God, is 
actual mercy. ' When I show mercy I show mercy." But 
that is hardly sufficient ; for the difficulty does not lie in the 
region of mercy, but in the region of wrath. Give Paul the 
sense of those indifferent passages about "the flag " and "'the 
rush," and the text becomes of the first class. The chapter 
sweetens in a moment. Sovereignty remains just as total ; and 
I believe it to be absolute. But it is not a do-as-you-please 
sovereignty. Paul brings Moses into a line with Christ. Just 
as the prophet said, " What could have been done more for 
my vineyard that I have not done in it ? " or as Jeremiah, " He 
doth not afflict willingly ; " or Christ, " How often would I 
have gathered ; " or Paul, " Who will have all men to be 
saved ; " or Ezekiel, " Have I any pleasure at all in the death 
of him that dieth ? " so there can be no ripple of doubt that 
Paul's great answer was. meant to be that God had said to 
Moses that He would have compassion on all He could, and 
save all that He was able. 

To the objection that this denies God's omnipotence, we op- 
pose, first, His own texts above given ; but then further, we 
interpose a proper account of God's omnipotence. He could 
make all the sea-corals archangels, or, taken by themselves, He 
could make the chalk cliffs of England redolent of their ancient 
life, and then make each insect which made them, a planet 
covered with inhabitants. But query. Is it irreverent to say that 
He could not do this in the broadest, widest and most intelli- 
gible sense ? God has a mighty whole for His work ; and it is 
perfectly consistent to imagine that He cannot remove even a 



282 ROMANS. 

grasshopper from our planet, athwart or aside of His whole 
design. 

1 6. But let us move on to the next difficulty. " So then it 
is not of him that willeth^ nor of him that runneth, but of 
God that showeth mercy'' (E. V. & Re). This is the trans- 
lation of everybody. And yet it is a wonder. The first 
syllable should have bred a pause. What a departure from all 
the thinking of the Bible to say that mercy " is not of him 
that willeth ! " What, in all strictness, is it of, according to 
the rules of the gospel, except specifically this very thing ? If 
a man wills^ he is saved. As a man wills, be it to him. To 
bring the impenitent to will is the whole burden of gos- 
pel preaching. A man will not will without the Spirit ; but 
that is not the idea. That is taught in another sentence where 
John says, *' Which were born not of the will of the flesh " (Jo. 
1 : 13). We may search in vain for a sentence which makes 
light of the human will as not the sine qua non of the soul's re- 
demption. 

But what then does the sentence mean ? Lay it down 
smoothly in the Greek, and look at it ! Remember Hebrais- 
tic habits of speech that love to place substantives last (Prov. 
16 : 2 ; 21 : 2 ; 22 : 11 ; 27 : 9, see Com.). And, lest some 
men object the repeating of the article, remember Jelf's rule 
that in certain strong cases the article must be repeated (Jelf, 
Gram. § 459, 9). Therefore it will be seen to be remarkable 
that a certain sense which we now subjoin, has not been earlier 
the reading of the passage. 

16. Then therefore it is not of the willing, nor of the run- 
ning, but of the mercy showing G-od. 

That meaning is entirely complete. With Paul's quotation 
that Heaven does all it can ; and with the implication that, 
in announcing this, God fulfilled all that He had declared and 
made all His goodness pass before His servant, comes the sim- 
ple corollary that then " it is not of the willing nor of the '* 
eagerly hastening God that damnation comes, but of one whose 
great aim is " mercy." It is not justice that is crushed by a 
theology like this, but justice that is ennobled. Just as the 



CHAPTER IX. 283 

sun produces tempests as well as summer radiance, so God 
does but shine when He curses, and shine too in mercy and 
compassion, though, as the fruit of His mercy, in the shape 
of a needful rectitude, some men are the victims of His wrath^ 
and suffer endlessly where He cannot save. 

17. For, notice further ; the word ydp in the seventeenth 
verse has not its simplest sense, but rather an explanatory one 
(see com. 4:3; Matt, i : 18), as though the apostle said, It 
is on this wise, or in necessary agreement with this, that the 
Almighty says, etc. 

17. So that it is on this wise that the Scripture says to 
Pharaoh,— For this very purpose did I raise thee up, that 
I might exhibit in thee My power, and that My name 
might be fully manifested in all the earth. 

God's glory is His final end (see remarks v. 15), but it is 
glory in the old Hebrew sense. The word "Ji33 (glory) means 
weight. It came to mean excellence. As a little child would 
say, God's final end is to do right, which agrees with His 
highest glory in the sense of excellency. But when it comes 
to display, that appears at once subordinate. And here we 
see expounded the subordinate uses of display. They are 
immensely great. Paul recurs to them again in the twenty- 
second verse. And here in the seventeenth they are the 
methods of God's mercy. I did not damn Pharaoh at my 
will, but necessarily, and in pursuit of an eternal plan. And 
though in that plan only God's back parts could be revealed 
(Ex. 33 : 23), yet that Great Sovereign condescends to tell 
His servant that one thing he must accept ; for that that one 
thing is the essence of His '^ goodness ; " that by telling it to 
Moses He did thereby "proclaim (His) name ; " that that one 
thing answered to his prayer that He would show him His 
glory ; and that that one thing was, that He " would have 
mercy on all on whom He could have mercy j " and that that 
bent and purpose of compassion must be recollected as the 
proper gloss of the severest expressions of the sovereignty of 
Heaven. 

18. I confess, however, that I feel weak when, after batter- 



284 ROMANS. 

ing down two walls, which every commentator has helped in 
building, I come to another, and the inexpugnableness of this 
triple defence appears in the fact that they are all built of dif- 
ferent material. How unlikely it seems to be that there should 
be three texts, all looking one way, all built of different Greek, 
each studied separately and pronounced upon alike by every 
interpreter of Scripture ; and that a student who avows that 
he hates their doctrine, should be right in teaching that all the 
expositors are wrong ; that all the passages fall into his view ; 
that the three texts are of the mildest, instead of the bitterest, 
in the word of God ; and that what intervenes to shew this, 
is different in every text, so that when one wall is broken 
down, it requires a different sap and mine in the least degree 
to affect the other ! Who would believe this ? And yet we 
could believe almost anything rather than the text, ''■There- 
fore hath He mercy on whom He will have mercy ^ and whom He 
will He hardeneth " (E. V., see also Re.). We are not con- 
scious of being warped by reason. Something in the Greek 
has arrested us in every instance. But if we tried hard to 
escape King James, we could not feel very guilty, when Paul is 
deliberately asking, '^/i- there unrighteousness with GodV ^XiA 
puts us off with the reply (E. V.) that He does as He pleases ; 
that He hardens whom He will ; and that the result is simply 
of His pleasure ; that " // is not of him that willeth,'' but, in the 
most starkly naked sense, of God where He chooses to damn. 

Let it be distinctly understood, God's perfect sovereignty 
we earnestly declare. The very dust that floats by this pen 
was decreed eternally. The lightest act, like the laugh of the 
fair girl who by her speech at Nahor was to become the ances- 
tress of the Redeemer (Gen. 24 : 14, 18, 19), is walled in like 
adamant. There can be no doubt of that. But that it is done 
for display, I mean chiefly ; or done at will, I mean simply at 
will, is abhorrent to all our feeling ; and that is a high act of 
piety that mellows this chapter of Paul, and lifts it out of that 
chamber of despair where it has so long brutalized the wor- 
shipers of Jesus. 

But now let us approach the sentence. The chief priests and 



CHAPTER IX. 285 

scholars in Jerusalem, when they passed by, mocked Christ, — 
" Let Him deliver Him now, if He will have Him " (E. V., 
Matt. 27 : 43). The sentence is el diXei avrSv. It is not classic 
Greek, but it is precisely similar to the words of our passage. 
The Septuagint says, " Sacrifice and offering thou didst not 
will " (ovK T^deXrjaag, Ps. 40 : 6). And Paul, still more leaning to 
Hebraistic use, throws away classic principle altogether ; for 
he actually talks of willing in humility (Col. 2 : 18), as though 
the words were n }^Dn. and as though there were no fealty that 
he owed to the strict original. Now consider this license of 
Paul, and our sentence is expounded at once. We are to take 
note of a/z£v (not expressed), and of the 6k, — '^ on the one hand'' 
and '■'■on the other hand,'' and, in ways more certain than in 
the other instances, this Scriptural thought emerges : — God 
wishes the salvation of all, I mean in a certain and well under- 
stood sense of revelation (Lu. 19: 42-; Lu. 13: 34), but He 
ordains only the salvation of some. For reasons that are good 
and noble — " One man whom He has a desire after He 
shows mercy to, and another man whom He has a desire 
after He hardens." As though he would say, " God would 
have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the 
truth" (i Tim. 2 : 4): but while "it is the glory of Gods to 
cover over a thing," it is " the glory of Kings to search a thing 
out" (Prov. 25 : 2). God cannot explain His administration ; 
on the contrary, " the heaven for height and the earth for 
depth, and the heart of Kings is unsearchable " (ib. v. 3) ; but 
He condescends to assure the Lawgiver that He hath mercy 
on whom He can, and Paul translates that as meaning — • 

18. Then, therefore, one man whom He has a desire 
after He shows mercy to, and another man whom He has 
a desire after. He hardens. 

19-21. Translators still continue to do injustice to the 
apostle. Mevowye C' r^//^^r ") in the twentieth verse, "H ("^r") 
in the twenty-first verse, 'Ei 61 {^^ but if) in the twenty-second 
verse, and above all ro 6vvaTov i^'what is possible'' for Him), and 
KaTTiprtauha (" who have been fitting the7?iselves "), are all trampled 
out. They are the very life of the passage. Paul does not 



286 ROMANS. 

mean to adopt the doctrine that "the potter has right over 
the clay." It would be an infamous idea. But his meaning 
is, Say that, " rather " than say the other thing. Mevowye, 
which occurs but four times in the Bible, is the very cream of 
the sentence. The objector, after such careful apologies for 
God as God had resorted to, comes after Him again, and Paul, 
rebuking this avTa-KOKpivdfievov, this desperate answerer back^ uses 
this word fievovvye. ''''Rather'' than answer that way, answer 
this way. That *' the potter has right over the clay,'' Paul does 
not dream, to wit, in the sense of creating a victim to suffer. 
Nothing could be more atrocious. If God has any moralities 
at all, they would cry out against such an exercise of power. 
The quiet expression "but if" in the twenty-second verse, 
shows that Paul is returning there to his actual argumenta- 
tion. But here he is merely flirting the caviller : — '''Rather " 
than say one mad thing, say the other, which might be distorted 
out of an ancient prophet (Jer. i8 : 6), and might seem to have 
as much a shadow-like capacity of reason : — 

19. Thou wilt say, therefore, unto me. Why does He yet 
find fault ? for who has resisted His will ? 20. Say rather, 
O man, * Who art thou who answerest back over and again 
to the Almighty ? Shall the thing formed say to Him who 
formed it, why hast thou made me thus?' 21. Or, 'Has 
not the potter right over the clay to make of the same 
lump one vessel to honor and another to dishonor ? ' 

^iLvovvye does not mean " Nay but " (E. V. & Re.) ; avraTOKpLvd. 
ywevoc does not mean simply who replies (E. V. & Re.) ; rj does 
not mean starkly nothing, so that we have a right to omit it 
altogether (E. V.), and e\ 6e does not mean " what if" (E. V. 
& Re.) ; so that if we insist that these particles, which are 
great lights in this connection, shall be treated as though 
meant by the apostle, we shall almost force the expositor to 
come into our better meaning. 

22. But if Grod, wishing to explain the wrath, and to make 
what is possible for Him known, endured with much long 
suffering vessels of wrath who had been fitting themselves 
for destruction ; 

It will be seen, therefore, that four things in this sentence 



CHAPTER IX. 287 

seem to fix its meaning ; first, the " But if,'' seeming 
to imply that the apostle is returning to more deliberate 
considerations; second, the word "explain," which means 
inwardly to explain, or to go to the bottom of a thing. The 
expression is not '' His wrath'' (E. V. & Re.), but "the 
wrath;" and '•^ wrath " in so merciful a Jehovah requires just 
such an explanation to be given by His dealings. Third, 
"what is possible." It was a shame to translate this ''^ His 
power " (E. V. & Re.). It is the same root that is transla- 
ted, " What the law could not do " (8 : 3). And, fourth, 
" fitting themselves." Now put all these together. The 
sense of the middle separates the lost from the saved. The 
lost ** had been fitting themselves " (see admissions of Dr. 
Hodge). The saved "He had before prepared unto glory" 
(see next verse). " What is possible for Him " agrees per- 
fectly with the fifteenth verse, — " / will have mercy o?i who7n- 
soever I can have mercy." And the specific purpose of display 
does not exhibit itself as the final end, but in agreement with 
the seventeenth verse, as the merciful means by which " the 
righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith " (i : 17), 
and by which God does what He can to " explain " what " is 
possible for Hii?i" to the creature. 

" Vessels : " to keep in view the illustration of " the potter'^ 
" Who had been fitting themselves :" to keep at a proper dis- 
tance the illustration of " the potter." No one can exaggerate 
the sovereignty of the " King ; " but He dooms the lost and 
He lifts the saint by an entirely different responsibility. He 
damns the one from the very beginning, but because he will 
''^ fit himself " for his fate, and He lifts the other without any 
such prevision. He does not pretend that we will understand 
it. But He does tell us in this gentlest chapter of His word, 
that He will save all He can, and that He will " explain " as far 
as He is able " what is possible " for His grace, and what must 
be true of " the wrath " that blazes forth in so patient an ad- 
ministration. 

23. And that He might make known the riches of His 
glory upon vessels of mercy whom He before prepared 
unto glory, 



288 ROMANS. 

Let us recur to the points made. First, the King is un- 
searchable (Ex. 2)Z : 22). Second, He announced to Moses 
that He would save all He could. Third, the abandonment of 
any, as signified in such a passage as " Jacob have I loved, and 
Esau have I hated'' is necessitated firstly and most of all by 
each man's wickedness, but, as concerns selections among the 
wicked to be subjects of mercy, is a deep mystery. Paul says 
there are reasons for it, for he gives the reasons for his own 
deliverance (i Tim. i : 13, 16), but those reasons are faraway 
out of our sight. But, fourthly, the reasons have to do with 
the uses of the gospel — I mean this, in part. The object of the 
gospel is to convert the sinner. The characterization of the 
gospel is that *'// is the power of God'' (Rom. i 16). The oper- 
ation of this ''^ power " is in its revealing " the righteousness of 
God" (ib.), and the exhibition of this righteousness is largely 
in the treatment of sinners. That He may ^^ explain (His) 
wrath " He punishes the lost (Of course He must do it 
justly) ; " and that He might make known the riches of His 
glory," He saves a remnant. Fifthly, the implication is that His 
conduct is so wise that it is ^' what is possible for Him " as a 
King (v. 22). And, sixthly, after celebrating this as ^^ His 
glory" and these very mysteries of His grace as " the riches of 
His glory" and holding out the joy that we were pre-determined 
to enjoy this " glory" ourselves, He lights down upon what is 
a habit of the apostle, viz., Scripture for it all. This Queen 
of the Epistles might be called, '' Mysteries of Christ Proved 
out of the Writings of the Older Dispensation ; " for the lost 
apodosis, which has so troubled commentators, is really the 
apostle putting his pen upon this very point : — 

24, 25. He says, as also in Hosea, of us whom He has 
also called, not of the Jews only but also of the Gentiles, 
I will call them My people who were not My people, 
And her beloved, who was not beloved ; 
26. And it shall be in the place where it was said to them. 
Ye are not My people. 
There they shall be called sons of a living God. 
It is thus that we solve many difficulties. First, the apodosis. 
The apodosis that we find is perfectly grammatical. If God, 



CHAPTER IX. 289 

wishing to do a certain thing, bore, &c. &c., and, with the further 
design to accompHsh still another thing ; (He avowed it long 
before, for) He says (as also with special application in Hosea), 
I will call them my people, &c., &c. Why this has not always 
been the apodosis, we cannot imagine. It explains the interpo- 
lation of Kcii (" also ") ; " whom He has also called." It is the 
echo of the word TrporjroiiiaaEv (" who?7i He before prepared,'' v. 23), 
" whom He has also called'' And then again " also in Hosea " 
— one of those delicate touches in the apostle to save him a 
whole narration. For now, let us mention a second difficulty. 
A second difficulty was that Hosea is speaking of the Israel- 
ites. Paul does not stay to notice that, but boldly says " Not 
of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles." He plainly 
asserts that God has said it in ten thousand other ways besides 
Hosea. But he claims " also "Hosea. And he claims him on 
the hardest point, not only that Israel might be cast off, but, 
what was more startling to a Jew, that Israel was never fairly 
on ; that they were " 7iot all Israel that were of Israel " (v. 6.) ; 
that they might easily credit the calling of the Gentiles when 
they themselves were quoad hoc Gentiles. And then the par- 
ticle 6k pushes that extreme by another quotation : — 

27. On the other hand Isaiah cries out concerning 
Israel— 

As though the apostle had said, Although the quotation 
before this might be supposed to apply to all men, and fairly 
to teach that we are "not beloved " till "beloved " through 
the blessed Redeemer, " on the other hand " Isaiah says what 
is specifically " concerning Israel." It is mad to start at God's 
sovereignty or arrogate the election of Heaven, when the Jews 
never became His people themselves except outwardly, accord- 
ing to Hosea, and " on the other hand,'' and in a way confined 
to Israel, Isaiah had cried out that the mass would never be a 
''people," — that the multitude of them would all be curst ; for, as 
he expresses it : — 

27. Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the 
sand of the sea, it is the remnant that shall be saved ; 28. 



290 ROMANS. 

For it is a word which He finishes and outs short that the 
Lord executes upon the earth. 

Mistake is at best vague and clashing. Tiie people could 
hardly have supposed that all Israel would be saved. For the 
prophets were full of denunciations. Yet they did teach that 
no circumcised Hebrew could perish (see com. 9 : 10). Infi- 
delity is a slimy bog that obstructs rather than confronts the 
Gospel. The Sadducees hardly believed that there was no 
form of immortality (Acts 23 : 8). And yet our Saviour, 
against them, and Paul, against the Rabbinical extravagance 
about the Jew, go down to the very depth, and answer once for 
all, and out of their own acknowledged authority of Scripture. 

He goes back further too in the prophet : — 

29. And as Isaiah had said before,— 

Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us a seed, 
We should have become as Sodom, and should have 
been made like unto Gomorrha. 

" Said before." Isaiah spanned sixty-two years (Is. 1:1). 
It was like quoting a prophet for each reign, *' Uzziah, 
Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah." Quoting this 
special language was referring to something a quarter of a 
century older than what went just before. And as the later 
Scripture was a prophecy (v. 27), and the earlier Scripture was 
a history (v. 29), the n-poelprfKev (^^ said before'') was graphic. 
Paul would overwhelm them with the argument that Israel 
always was and always would be cursed, and only blessed by 
the same law as the accursed heathen. 

30. What shall we say then? 

Paul is going to end with what Solomon would call "the 
conclusion of the whole matter" (Ec. 12 : 13). Godward he 
has brought out the fact that the discrepancies of fate are de- 
termined upon (i), not for divine display, and (2), not for 
" mere good pleasure," but for evdoda, or God's " thinking fit," 
under necessary rules of administration. And now, manward, 
he centres all upon "faith" (v. 30). It was not "blood" 
(Jo. I : 13) ; and it was not rite (Gal. 5 : 6) ; and it was not 



CHAPTER IX. 291 

" w^r/^i-," done by the letter under the mere instructions "^/ 
the law " (Gal. 2 : 16), but it was just the one solitary thing of 
obedience to the rule of faith in the Redeemer. 

These are his sentences : — " What shall we say then? " 

30.— That Gentiles, not pressing after a righteousness, had 
put their hands on a righteousness, but it was the right- 
eousness of faith ; 31. But that Israel, pressing after a law 
of righteousness, came not the earlier to any law; 32. 
Why? Because, not out of faith but as it were out of 
works, they stumbled at the stone of stumbling ; 33. As it 
has been written, 

Behold I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and an en- 
trapping rock ; 

And he who believes on It shall not be made ashamed. 

30. ** Not pressing after a righteousness." Paul does not 
mean that the nations had no idea of virtue ; but that the 
Jews had no other idea ; that their very chief was a Law- 
giver. He means to remind them that their rule was a 
theocracy ; that their very raison d'etre was, to be pure and 
holy. He calls to remembrance their sacred books, which 
were stuffed full of moral commandments. He remembers 
their sacrifices, which were meant to teach them " righteous- 
ness." He only means to say that the heathen led com- 
mon lives, with only common chances to know the Almighty, 
but that the Jews' very business was to be righteous. He 
was about to tell them (10 : 2) that they had "^ zeal for 
God,'' and actually wanted to keep the law, but that for one 
sole defect they were cursed (v. 32). The " Gentiles, not 
pressing after a righteousness, KaT'eka^tv, had gripped down upon 
a righteousness, but it was the righteousness of faith. But 
Israel," who had a vast system of ordinances to assist this very 
exercise of dependence, had nursed the ordinances and lost 
the faith. "Pressing after a law of righteousness," they 
followed it even in the minutest details (Jo. 5 : 10) with a 
'■'• zeaV {y . 2) totally different from 'any of the Gentiles. And 
yet Gentiles were saved, and they not ! Why ? Because Gen- 
tiles, like Abel, accepted Christ, and they, like Cain, had 
another offering. 



292 



ROMANS. 



All these words are expressive. 30. " Put their hands 
upon ; " that actual gripe and seizure which consists in ''faith'' 
" A. righteousness J '' iov it was not the perfect righteousness^ 
"but" only that dawning one which rises in the sinner. 31. 
''Pressing after a law of righteousness'' Notice the guard put. 
Israel really did noX, press "after righteousness ; " and, there- 
fore, they did not even attain the "law." * They followed 
the law slavishly, that is, the shell or letter of the law. But as 
*' the righteousness of the law " (8 : 4) is the sole kind of right- 
eousness, they did not attain that. They simply kept the letter 
with bad hearts and dark consciences, or, as Paul describes it, 
" a zeal for God^ but not according to knowledge" (10: 2). 
" Came not the earlier." ^eavu> means more than " arrive at '* 
(Re.). It means to come the first. " We which are alive and 
remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent (or 
come before, (pddoujuev) them that are asleep" (i Thess. 4 : 15). 
It helps us to mingle better the Jew and the barbarian. Both 
shall come (some of them), but neither earlier or with 
fixed permission above the other. " Why? Because not out 
of faith, but, as it were, out of works." " Works " will save 
any body. " Repent and be converted that your sins may be 
blotted out " (Acts 3 : 19). What Paul means are " works of 
the law " (9 : 32). That, it is to be noticed, is the more full 
expression. A man is never saved by works which the law 
leads him to by merely thundering at him. He is never saved 
by mere preaching, that is to say, by direction f or eloquent 
appeal. Salvation must be " by faith ; " which, in simpler lan- 
guage, means turning to God in recognition of His grace, and 
seeking, through Him, a change of nature. 

" Stumbling." Isaiah connects the idea of a trap (Is. 8 : 
14). A trap, first (i), deceives ; second (2), attracts, and, 

* '' Righteousness" {Y,,\.) is not repeated under the best authorities 
(see Re.). 

, f Law (Heb.) is from the verb to cast, and is derived from the idea of 
throwing up the hand to point out the way, that is, to direct. " Works of 
the law " were works induced by mere direction, works that could not be 
saving, because they required additionally the gift of the Holy Spirit. 



CHAPTER X. 293 

third (3), ruins. Paul adds this idea to the thought of his 
Redeemer. " To the Greeks (He was) foolishness " (i Cor. i : 
23). They looked into His claims, and found them stupid. 
But "to the Jews (He was) a stumbling-block" (ib.). The 
Jews, of all other men, were prepared for the Redeemer. 
This was (2) the Messianic bait. They were hurrying on after 
Christ by the instigation of all their prophecies. This gave 
them the bitter fall when they stumbled against Him. For 
(i) they were deceived. They needed just such " a stone," but 
the builders rejected it. They did not dream that this was 
their Messiah. While the Greeks were cool, the Jews were in 
a fury against their Redeemer. In their zeal for Christ they 
stumbled against Him ; and (3) the horrid ruin of their crime 
was incident to those three facts : first, their aroused excite- 
ment about a King ; second, their utter ignorance of the Man ; 
and, third, the crime that all this begat. No wonder that 
Paul's feelings were aroused ; first, in profound pity for the 
Jew ; and, second, that this most improbable Prince, the " gin 
and the snare " (Is. 8 : 14) of Israel, might be found out in 
time as one by believing in wlioni men might "not be 
made ashamed." 



CHAPTER X. 

1. Brethren, my heart's approval indeed, and prayer 
to God for them, is in the direction of salvation. 

We must notice carefully this word evdoKla. It is not ^'■desire " 
(E. V. & Re.). Paul says, " I obtained mercy because I did it 
ignorantly " (i Tim. i : 13). He makes a still stronger state- 
ment, " I verily thought I ought to do many things against 
the name of Jesus of Nazareth" (Acts 26 : 9). The slightest 
generosity would lead him to think of that in respect to his 
people. *' My heart's approval," Paul would very naturally 
say, lies "in the direction of (the Jews') salvation." 

Notice the ^ikv which, as translated "indeed," comes in well 
even in English idiom. 



294 ROMANS. 

2. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for 
God, but not according to knowledge. 

What frightful sacrifices these Hebrews made (i Mace, 2 : 
32, etc.; 2 Mace. 15 : i, etc.) ! 

3. For not knowing God's righteousness, and seeking 
to establish their own, they have not submitted them- 
selves to the righteousness of God. 

Paul did not mean that he approved of their salvation if God 
did not save them, but that his hopes lay " in the direction " of 
God's doing it. They had been so miserably deceived ! But 
now, he pictures just the common lack by which all perish. 
They had not " knowledge." The word is a very strong one 

And this word emyvuaig means that inner moral knowledge 
(i : 28 ; Heb. 10 : 26) so often characterized as of the '^ truth" 
(Ps. 51:6; 61: 7; 119: 142), so often called 'Wight" (2 Cor. 
4 : 6), which is really tantamount to ''love" (i Jo. 3 : 2), and 
which is the all-including exercise of a renovated conscience. 
What they needed for "zeal" was that it should be out of a 
converted heart (Acts 26 : 18). And to this agrees the further 
expression. Paul had said that the Gospel was " the power of 
God" (i : 16). And he had explained that the reason it was 
"the power" was that therein, as its great object, "the 7'ight- 
eousness of God (was) revealed" (i : 17). That revelation is 
nothing more than this same causing to know of which this 
passage speaks. Paul had been showing that we could not be 
caused to know by the law ; in other words, we cannot be 
taught to be morally enlightened. Moreover we cannot teach 
ourselves. A man cannot enlighten his own conscience and 
heart. Therefore, a man cannot be justified by the works of 
the law, that is, made righteous in this impossible way, by the 
law instilling works, or creating good and illuminated actions. 

4. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness 
to everyone that believes. 

A fine exposition of this is in the next verse : — 

5. For Moses writes that the man who has done the 
righteousness which is from the law shall live therein. 



CHAPTER X. 295 

It is not necessary that he should do it perfectly. He is 
not speaking of the hard demands that were made of the first 
Adam. When Moses said, " Behold, I have set before thee 
this day life and good, and death and evil " (Deut. 30 : 15), 
he does not mean that " life " lay only with the perfect. He 
meant just what Christ meant, — that if they would listen to 
these moral sayings of His and do them (Matt. 7 : 24), they 
would be choosing "life." This is meant by ^^ the righteous- 
ness from the law'' (see also 2 : 26 ; 8:4), which is just as 
true a righteousness, if it were attained, as " the righteousness 
of God.'' But Moses knew, and Paul knew infinitely better 
than Moses, that commanding people to be righteous, and 
causing people to be righteous were entirely different things. 
Moses was correct in promising life to the keepers of command- 
ments, and, therefore, " the righteousness from the law " is all 
they wanted. But keeping the commandments still remained 
as the condition, and their keeping the commandments was a 
thing absurd. Keeping the commandments involved " know- 
ledge," and moral " knowledge " was the light of God, and this 
grand requisite is the want of the sinner, and thoroughly 
explains all the language of the apostle. "For they, not 
knowing God's righteousness" (v. 3). Of course, that was 
their very difficulty. They could not open their own con- 
science. God, as the sole Model, was revealed to them in 
great mercies, and they could not see Him. "And seeking 
to establish their own '» (v. 3), that is, to get good and holy 
by taking up the outward commandments. " They have not 
submitted themselves to the righteousness of God " (v. 3). 
That is (i), they have departed from the Model, resting satis- 
fied with a righteousness of forms, and, furthermore (2), 
departed from the commandment. Thundered out from Sinai 
was the command to believe. The law recognized no other 
method of being reformed. ** Christ was the end of the 
law"— blazoned in a thousand sacrifices. The chief occupa- 
tion on Horeb was to see that He was prefigured. There was 
no way of obeying without Him ; and, therefore, as the only 
''end" of the commandment, He was the only means of 



296 ROMANS. 

^^ knowledge,'' and thence of ''^ faith,'' and thence of ^^ works," 
for -anyone who desired a recovery of '•'' righteousness y 

To put it all plainly, " Christ (was) the end of the law " in 
two particulars. First, that a return to the law was described 
as repentance, and there was no repentance for the devils, 
but only for the beneficiaries of Christ; and, second, that Christ 
Himself was a part of the law, and that the chief weeks on 
Sinai were spent in describing Christ, and in binding upon the 
people that which He Himself afterward called the chief 
occasion of sin (Jo. 15 : 24), and the chief subject of the 
" work " (Jo. 6 : 29), and will (Jo. 7 : 17), and way (Jo. 10 : 
6 ; Acts 18 : 26) of the Most High ; that is, to take Him up 
and believe on Him as the only cleansing. 

The righteousness of God as meaning imputed obedience, and 
our own righteousness as meaning one which we seek to establish 
as satisfying the law, are the doctrines of our day ; yet never- 
theless are mere Lutheranisms. It is anomalous that things 
absent from fifteen centuries, should become so fixed in the 
last three. These are in no respect useful. Christ can become 
all our hope in the way the fathers described Him. He died 
for us. All that I need is pardon. Secure to me a continued 
pardon, and make it triumphant and complete in the day of 
judgment, and all my curses must be removed, and my chief 
curse is my iniquity. It impairs grace to dream that that is 
not sufficient. In fact tell plainly where it is not sufficient ! 
If I am sinful, and therefore guilty, and therefore given 
over to sin ; and then, if I am ransomed, and, therefore 
pardoned, and so completely pardoned at the last that I 
am entirely sanctified, where do I need the righteousness of 
another ? It does not detract from Christ's work, it adds to 
it, to make " the one sacrifice perfect forever them that are 
sanctified." And there are evidences in this very chapter 
that forensic ^^righteousness" is not conceived of. "For 
Moses writes that the man who has done the righteouness 
which is from the law shall live therein." This would not 
be true if " righteousness '' must be imputed. But take it as we 
have explained, that the condition of salvation is " righteous- 



CHAPTER X. 297 

ness J " that that " righteousness " must be in the sinner ; that 
that " righteousness'' begins not perfect ; nevertheless, even in 
its dawning shape, that Moses and all the prophets have 
declared that we will " live thereby j " that this " righteousness " 
is nothing more than the washing (i Cor. 6 : 11), and the 
cleansing (2 Cor. 7 : i ; i Jo. i : 9), and the repentance (Acts 
20 : 21), and the conversion (Acts 3 : 19), and the turning 
from sin (Ez. t^t, : 11) of all the preachers of the Word, and 
we have just what Paul describes, a thing not reached through 
being commanded, but reached through being instilled. 
" The righteousness from the law,'' and with no other prompt- 
ing, would save a man if he possessed it, but who is going to 
possess it ? The command of it merely genders to bondage ; 
6. But the righteousness which is from faith speaks on 
this wise,— Say not in thy heart, who shall ascend into 
heaven? (that is to bring Christ down); 7. Or who shall 
descend into the abyss ? (that is to bring Christ up from 
among the dead) ; 8. But what says it ? The word is nigh 
thee in thy mouth and in thy heart (that is the word of 
faith which we preach), 9. That if thou wilt confess with 
thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in thy heart that 
God raised Him from among the dead, thou shalt be saved. 

10. For with the heart belief is had unto righteousness, 
but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. 

11. For the Scripture says. Whosoever believes on Him 
shall not be made ashamed. 

Paul's view and the Jewish view of salvation by "right- 
eousness" (v. 5) are here discriminated. They are discrimi- 
nated in three particulars. Paul's speech would become con- 
fused if we did not recognize the fertility of his figure, (i) 
** Say not in thy heart, who shall ascend into heaven ? " 
This is an echo of a Proverb, '' Who hath ascended up into 
heaven or descended ? " (Prov. 30: 4; see Author's Com.). The 
words are Messianic. Paul has the idea of Solomon. Somebody 
has had to do great things. His first point, therefore, against 
Israel is, that they are taking on themselves far too much the 
work of the Almighty. ^^Righteousness " (v. 5) would have been 
nothing without an atonement ; and to bring Christ down, as 
God and Man, and to raise Christ up "by exceeding greatness 



298 ROMANS. 

of power" (Eph. i : 19) "from among the dead" of our 

fallen race, had to be done, but what had the Jews to do with 
it ? Then the first intimation of Paul was that the Jews took 
too much upon them of the great first agencies necessary to 
their salvation. It was as easy to raise Christ up as it was to 
raise them up, and as a work of supernatural power they had 
nothing to contribute. " Faith,'* therefore, placed this mat- 
ter in a right light. (2) Faith, secondly, placed all matters in 
a right light. There was no requisite but faith. This point is 
often harped upon in Scripture. The burden of its appeal is, 
"Thou art careful and troubled about many things." Christ 
said, If any man say, Lo here is Christ, or, Lo there, go not after 
him. " Why as though living in the world are you subject to- 
ordinances ? " (Col. 2 : 20). This Paul everywhere presses, 
(i) The first point therefore, was, that great things had to be 
done, but they were not the persons to do them. (2) The 
second point was that but one thing has to be done, so far as is 
in the scope of the sinner's responsibility. And now again (3) 
a third point was. That that one thing is " faith." <' Say not in 
thy heart,'' who shall do things utterly beyond human account- 
abihty, but do one little, infirm, reasonable thing to brings 
near you the help of the Redeemer. Paul knew perfectly 
well that they could not do even that one. But there is the 
point where God chooses to begin with His people. "Who- 
soever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved " 
(v. 13). In the more simple human sense, that we can do ;. 
but in the more important and divine sense we will not even 
do that. Paul begins there as the low down region where God 
chooses to move upon His people. *' Say not in thy heart " wha 
will do this or that thing, either (2) wholly indifferent, or (1) 
divine and impossible, but (3) do this thing, go humbly to God 
under the direction of me His servant, and God will listen, and 
bless your humblest petition for help. 

'^ Faith'' becomes saving ^' faith" where the feeblest '■'■call" 
of the terrified and convicted sinner becomes the feeblest trust 
of the penitent and loving child of God. True faith has this 
moral differentia. There is much in Scripture to establish 



CHAPTER X. 299 

that. Christ, when decrying '' Christ here " or ** Christ there," 
says, "The Kingdom of God is within you." We are not to 
seek it in ordinances, but earnestly in moral light. And what 
He distinctly means is fixed by a simile. As the lightning 
shines all over Heaven (Matt. 24: 27), so '^righteousness'' is 
no wretched act, like circumcision, but an illumination every- 
where within the heart, and Paul tells just where it begins, 
viz., in a '^ call'' upon God, whatever you choose to name it, 
in the way of seeking or dependence. Paul, in fact, has 
returned to the simple idea, that if a man wishes to be saved,, 
circumcision is nothing (i Cor. 7 : 19), just as baptism is noth- 
ing, but he must find out that he is a sinner, and then seek 
"the righteousness which is from faith;" the meaning of 
which now is very conspicuous. It is not *' the righteousness 
which is from law ;" for though that is as good as any other,, 
it cannot be engendered. The law cannot move us to a gen- 
uine righteousness. To bestow that is a miracle. It must be 
the gift of the Almighty. And, therefore, it must be a '^ right- 
eousness (or moral ^\t2S^^VLi%) from faith." It is the acknowledg- 
ment of God wherein God chooses that it shall begin. Faith, 
when righteous, is itself its beginning. That moral "light- 
ning " which shines from one part of a man's conscious sky to 
another begins in '•'' faith ; " the common ''faith " of the law 
changing under its own prayer into the moral and saving 
"faith " of the regenerating Gospel. 

Let us clear up now some notable expressions. 

"Law'* (v. 5); any law. There is no article. The Bud- 
dhist law, where it embraces morality, would save a man if he 
were actually turned to it. But what is to turn him to it ? 
Turning or converting a man is the very acme of the Gospel. 
Christ becomes the only accomplishment for the law ; for 
Moses says that a man who has obeyed " law " shall live 
therein, and no man will obey law except by the help of Christ, 
and, what is more specific still, without acknowledging Him. 

This acknowledgment may be very obscure. But even 
Socrates, if we are to suspect that he may have been saved,, 
or Cornelius, or, going back to a much obscurer time, Abra- 



300 ROMANS. 

ham, or, choosing still more strikingly, Lot, must have had 
some Gospel ; that is, they must have recognized their own 
sinfulness, and must have looked upon God as in some way 
an adorable Redeemer. 

^^Therein'* (v. 5); that is, the man who does righteousness 
shall live not by hut "//^" his righteousness. His righteous- 
ness shall be his life (Prov. 19 : 23 ; see Com. on Prov. in loc). 

'■''The righteousness which is from faith.'" The righteousness 
is faith. Faith as effused with love is the dawning righteous- 
ness, and is in fact of the nature of the only righteousness 
that even God can manifest. There is but one lightning that 
flashes over the heavens. And we remember that Abraham's 
faith, whose only imperfection was its sinfulness, was hailed as 
a first fruits, and was reckoned as far as it went as a righteous- 
ness (Jas. 2 : 23). Abraham, made perfect in Heaven, will 
have lost his sins, but will have no other righteousness than 
faith gloriously made perfect in its moral vision. There is 
no morality in God except the morality of an omniscient 
£7riyvo)oi^, discernment of virtue (Hab. i : 13 ; Jas. i : 17). 

''''From faith.'' Why does it not say '' in faith " ? Because 
though righteousness consists in faith, it is also '■'■ from faith^* 
just as one stage of holiness is produced by another. Right- 
eousness is not from law ; because law cannot command 
righteousness so as to induce it. There are, therefore, no 
'■'"works of law'' (Gal. 2 : 16), that is, works produced by law 
without a divine interference ; but there is a righteousness 
from faith, not simply because faith is righteousness, but 
because God has interfered already, (i) Faith is His handi- 
work. Moreover (2) it is the point where He commands 
approach ; and (3) where He begins to bless the returning 
sinner. 

"To bring Christ down." Men can have nothing to do 
with God's incarnation. "Nor to bring Christ up." These 
must be wrought without us, — not only our own cleansing, 
but the resurrection of Christ from the death of His dead 
mother. The Jews took too much upon them of their own 
salvation. 



CHAPTER X. 301 

"But what saith it?" The real arena of work, now that 
all is finished, is in the acquiescence of the conscience. We 
are to obey Christ. And for this, which must be childlike, 
"the word is nigh us" (v. 8). I do not mean that we can 
do this without God. But here it is that we must expect God. 
The tree cannot grow of itself, but it cannot grow at all at its 
trunk. It must gather at its roots, and at its outmost foliage. 
And there it cannot grow of itself. It spreads itself to the 
actinic ray, and it drinks by its rootlets in the earth. It could 
not live without nature ; but here is where it is to expect 
nature. It is not to go up to Heaven, but it is to drink just 
where God bids it. And our tree-life reads thus : — " The 
word is nigh thee." That is, the truth that God uses to 
bless, is close, like the carbon of the air. And there is present 
the actinic ray; that is, God is always striving to bless (Gen. 
6:3; Job 7 : 18). "That if thou wilt confess with thy 
mouth that Jesus is Lord." Infinitely far from meaning. If 
thou wilt just say so. But if, in Oriental phrase (Matt. 12 : 
34), out of the abundance of the heart thou, a morally changed 
man, hast thy conscience opened to the Lord Jesus ; as Paul 
expressed it. If thou wilt " believe in the Lord " (Acts 16 : 31); 
and, if, repeating that idea, thou shalt "believe in thy heart 
that God raised Him from among the dead, thou shalt 
be saved." * Here is no talisman for a superstitious conver- 
sion, but here is the lowly door where men are to enter into 
the Kingdom. We are to learn that we are sinners ; and, with 
the word in our mouth that gives direction for our salvation, 
we are to seek God just there : "For with the heart belief 
is had unto righteousness, but with the mouth "—Notice 
the ^^ but'' {6e). Faith must necessarily be of '^ the heart;" 

* We will not repeat the interpretation. See 6: 4; 8: 34. The great 
chrism of Christ which made Him Christos, was not resurrection from the 
grave, but that raising from among- the dead, wrought by the Godhead 
that was incarnate, which, with sighs and tears and wrestlings, separated 
Him from among sinners, and made the child of a dead woman escape her 
sinfulness, and slowly rise from among the dead, even in the respect of 
" infirmity " and being " tempted," by a gradual probation (see again Heb. 
5 : 7, 8 ; 2 : 10). 



302 ROMANS. 

for as moral faith it amounts to righteousness ; but it must 
not stop. It will show itself in the hands, or, to invoke the 
Oriental simile (Heb. 13 : 5 ; i Jo. 4 : 2, 3), it will spring to 
the lips. It will pervade our whole nature. See how far Paul 
has traveled from the idea that descent or circumcision can be 
the question of pardon, 

12. He is ready now for another step. Men are all alike: — 

12. For there is no difiference of Jew or Greek, for the 
same Lord of all is rich unto all who call upon Him; 
13. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord 
shall be saved. 

"Call." This is just such another word as ^''confess'' (v. 9); 
only it is still more superficial. Dreadful snares have been 
spread in the church like those in Israel. " This is my cove- 
nant," God told the people, — '* Every male child shall be cir- 
cumcised " (Gen. 17 : 10). Men have played wild with the 
text, just as Roman Catholics have with " This is my body" 
(Matt. 26 : 26). The deadliest snare of all is in this word 
^^ call." Men are not to be pardoned by simply crying out to 
God ; any more than they are to be saved by the water of 
baptism. On the contrary, God warns against such idea 
(Matt. 7 : 21). But it is appalling how many are waiting for 
just that. When men are launched from a gibbet exultant 
from an over-night forgiveness after a mere terrified " call," 
they owe their delusion to an abuse of just such texts. We 
are to "look and live." But it is a " look " very different 
from that of thousands in our communions, and involves a 
moral beholding of Christ. It is a "(receiving of) the love of 
the truth" (2 Thess. 2 : 10). This very passage (v. 10), tells 
us that it is ^^ with the heart belief is had unto righteousness.'' 
And though we may go to Christ in terror, we must go at last 
in love, for it is only when the '■'■ calV is touched with what is 
moral that it has fastened upon Christ, and borne away from 
Him an actual salvation. 

Paul's emphasis, however, is upon the word " all " (ttcc, 
vs. II, 13). His use for the text is to mingle Jew and Gentile 
(v. 12). And now he takes another step : — 



CHAPTER X. 303 

14. How then can they call on Him in whom they have 
not believed?— 

His argument is, If all who ** call " are to be saved, those 
who are expected to '^ call'' must be preached to. He wishes 
to defend his ministry to the Gentiles. That is his specific 
object; and, mark you, he has been appealing (vs. 11, 13) to 
their own Scriptures. If in your own Scriptures it is said that 
"all" (Trdf) who call on the name of the Lord shall be saved'' 
(v. 11), and that "all" (Trdf) who believe ^^ shall not be made 
ashamed^" why do you object to me for ministering to the 
Gentiles ? For " how can they call on Him in whom they 
have not believed? 

14— But how can they believe in Him of whom they 
have not heard? and how can they hear without a 
preacher? 15. And how can they preach except they be 
sent ? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them 
who preach the gospel of good things ! 

We cannot tell how many heathen have been saved. We 
do not know whether Cornelius (Acts 10 : i, etc.) had ever 
heard of Christ. If He had, would it not have been mentioned 
(Acts 10 : 35) ? Abraham and Job and even Peter (Acts i : 6) 
cannot have known as we do of a Redeemer. It is to the 
point to say that this passage teaches nothing on the question. 
Paul had said, All that believe on Christ (v. 11), and all that 
call upon His name (v. 14), shall be saved ; and all churches 
agree that everything about Christ is a powerful engine of 
salvation. But Paul does not speak to the other point. He 
only argues. If the Holy Ghost has taken the pains to tell us 
that the revelation of Christ may be the salvation of any, why 
do you object to me for saying that preaching Him may be of 
the Holy Ghost ? If all who call upon Him will be saved, why 
not all hear of Him ? for " how can they believe on Him 
of whom they have not heard? and how can they hear 
without a preacher? and how can they preach except 
they be sent? " And how welcome to the Divine Mind must 
this work anywhere be ; for "it is written, How beautiful 
are the feet" (that is, how noble is the activity, 2 Sam. 22: 
34) "of them" ("that preach the gospel of peace," E. V., 



304 ROMANS. 

said to be spurious, see Re.) "who preach the gospel of 
good things" (Is. 52: 7). 

16. But they did not all obey the gospel— 

Compactly put in is the idea that they were ahke in another 
particular : — All to be preached to, but few reached and 
rescued. 

16.— For Isaiah says :— 

Quoting their own Scriptures, — 

16.— Lord, who has believed what we had for them to 
hear ? 

Paul, showing the same peculiarity of proving everything by 
their Hebraistic writings, goes on sententiously to other points. 
If Isaiah cries out so passionately, " Lord, who has believed 
our amf}'' — ^^ our hearing''' or, as we have been free to trans- 
late, " what we had for them to hear," then we have inspired 
warrant for two other things, first, that " belief" was to have 
come "from hearing," and, second, that "the hearing," in 
this case, was "by a word of Christ." This was well argued 
enough, for the chapter which that verse begins was the cele- 
brated chapter of the eunuch which he was reading sitting in 
his chariot, and which helped so very much to supply the faith 
which Philip recognized when he undertook to baptize him. 
The next verse includes these two points : — 

17. Therefore the belief comes of hearing, but the hear- 
ing by a word of Christ. 

We easily finish the chapter. Paul makes out four lesser 
points : — First, everybody did hear, and it was Jew and 
Gentile alike. Second, the Jews knew the fact ; for, recol- 
lect, in saying these things, he is solely proving them out of 
their own Scriptures. Thirdly, they had been uttered by 
their own prophets more boldly than had been done by Paul. 
And, fourth, the Israelites themselves had been prominent 
above the the rest in the bitterness with which they had 
repelled the gospel. These four points are a sufficient account 
of the four next quotations, and their intention by the apostle. 



CHAPTER X. 305 

18. But I say, did they not hear ? Rather 
Their sound went out into all the earth, 
And their words unto the ends of the world. 

19. But 1 say, Did not Israel know ? First Moses says : 

I will provoke you to jealousy by that which is no 

nation ; 
By a foolish nation will I anger you. 

20. But Isaiah is very bold and says:— 

I was found of them that sought me not ; 

I was made manifest to them who asked not after me. 

21. But to Israel he says:— All day long did I spread 
forth my hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people. 

It will be seen how all these authorities illustrate Paul's 
text, '"'■For there is no difference between Jew and Greek'' (v. 
12), and how he Ivas already guarded the twentieth verse, 
"I was found of them that sought me not;" for this, 
nakedly uttered, would be a dreadful presentation of the Gos- 
pel. But he had already said that there was "■ no difference 
between Je'cV and Greek, for the same Lord over all (was) rich 
unto all that call upon Him " (v. 12). This seeking, ox prayer, 
or co7ning to God, or calling upon His name, or asking after Him, 
as we may choose to give it a designation, was just the thing 
that distinguished men where Jewish blood did nothing. Paul 
would hardly deny that. And therefore the expression, "I was 
found of them that sought me not*' (v. 20) is unbearably 
mistaken, unless we go to another verse. Paul had said '' that 
the Gentiles, not pressing after righteousness, (had) put their 
hands upon righteousness " (9 : 30). And we explain that in 
the light of both passages. The Jews for centuries had pre- 
tended to be ''pressing after " God. The rest had done noth- 
ing of the kind. And, therefore, in the immediate neighbor- 
hood of each other we have texts which will explain their 
mutual meaning. " / was found of them that sought me not " 
is in the spirit of the expression, " Oh that men would shut the 
doors ; neither let them kindle fire on my altar for nought " 
(Mai. I : 10). Such seeking as the Jews had done was an 
abhorrence ; and the Gentiles, freshly awakened, would seek 
differently from many of the Jews, in that humble and honest 
sense which would obtain salvation. 



3o6 ROMANS, 



CHAPTER XI. 

1. I say then, Did God cast off His people ? By no means ; 
for I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the 
tribe of Benjamin. 

We must not relax for a moment the vigilant idea that Paul 
is arguing from Scripture, and not from reason. The Hebrew 
writings are the gist of the epistle. He remembers just at 
this pose of his argument how the Hebrews will say, You are 
contradicting the very promise that made us a nation. This 
promise is given in many forms {2 Chr. 20 : 7 ; Is. 41 : 10 ;) 
but with his usual terseness of appeal Paul chooses one of 
them. Samuel had said, " The Lord will not forsake His peo- 
ple " (i Sam. 12 : 22) ; and Paul defends himself, actually 
using the same word, dTrw^w (to reject), and defends himself 
boldly, broadly making the appeal, " Has God cast off His 
people? " and answers that appeal out of their own Scriptures, 
and in three particulars, (i) First, God had not ^' cast off His 
people " in the sense that none of them could be saved ; at least 
it was not for him to think so, for he was of that '■^people "* and 
he was claiming to be both a saint and an apostle. It raises a 
smile, however, to see the covert logic that is included under 
this starting out of the reply. What did they care for Paul ? 
Not the Gentiles, to be sure, but the Jews, for whom these 
sentences were given ! The very point that he had to establish 
was that he was a saint and an apostle. It spreads a 
broad humor over his speech when we remember how he shuts 
them in by a sharp dialectic. Either he was a saint, and then 
his first point is gained, that '* God has (not) cast off His people " 
in such a sense that all of them must perish, or else he was 
not a saint, and the more execrable his apostate character, the 
more thoroughly was it true that " 6^^^ (had) cast off His peo- 

* He was not only "an Israelite," but born so; and not only "of 
Abraham's seed," but, what was further significant, he was " of the tribe 
of Bezijaiiiin," a house that was the least contaminated by dispersion and 
exile. 



CHAPTER XL 307 

pie " in the exact serise that he taught, viz., that some of them 
were not ''elect*' (v. 5), and that only the remnant were of the 
seed of Israel (v. 7). 

(2) The second point was bolder yet. " God (had not) cast 
of His people " in any sense which was not originally in- 
tended : — 
2. God has not cast off His people whom He foreknew ;— 
And he quotes for this far back in the time of Elijah — " in 
Elijah " as the saying is ; that is, in the speeches and the 
annals of that greatest Old Testament seer. Do not impeach 
me of wrong when I teach that a great number of Jews will 
perish ; and do not say that " God has cast off His people " in 
a sense in which He promised not to (i Sam. 12: 22), and in a 
sense in which He defined a ''people " in His mind as a " people 
whom He foreknew;" for as far back as the time of Elijah He 
contemplated utter losses from among the Jews. " Or ; " this 
is the way he begins his statement. " God has not cast away 
His people'' whom He ever intended or marked to be His 
people ; " or,'' is it that you are thoughtless of the facts ? — 

2.— Or, know you not what the Scripture says in Elias, 
how he talks with God against Israel, 3. Iiord, they have 
killed thy prophets, they have digged down thine altars, 
and I only am left, and they seek my life. 4. But what says 
the oracle unto Him ? I have left unto myself seven thou- 
sand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. 5 . So, 
therefore, also at the present time there are those left ac- 
cording to an election of grace. 

" Talks with God." " Intercession " (E. V.) is too strong a 
word. Elijah would not pray against his people. (See kvrvyxav^, 
Xen. Mem. 3, 2, i). ^pv^J-arLafidg is not an "answer of God" 
(E. V. & Re.) ; and though it may be resolved into that, yet 
why not say literally an " oracle " ? " Left " (vs. 4, 5). It is 
well to connect by the same English, words from the same 
root (AetTTw). Where the argument is documentary, it brightens 
the connecting link. "To Baal." Baal has the article, and 
the article is feminine ; but that does not warrant us in trans- 
lating "to the image of Baal" {^. V.). For though ei/cwv 



3o8 ROMANS. 

[*^ image'*) is feminine, so is Baal sometimes (i Sam. 7:4; 
Hos. 2:8; Zeph. I : 4). Besides, if it meant ^^ the image of 
Baar\¥j. v.), it would be more likely to stand t-^ t-ov BdaA, as 
Baal has always the article (see Alford). 

In all the reasoning of the apostle he has not lost sight of 
the idea of "grace." He has stripped it of its wantonness 
He has written that exquisite chapter, the ninth, so gentle, and 
so much abused. He has caused God's goodness to pass 
before us by uttering that marked text ** / will have mercy on 
whomsoever I can have mercy'' He has spoken of foreknowl- 
edge, and said ^^whom He did foreknow^ them He also planned out 
beforehand'' (8 : 29). And yet neither by the restriction of 
what he calls '''•that which is possible for God" (9 : 22), nor by 
the marking out by foreknowledge of what will suit as an 
"election" among the people, has he robbed God of '■''graced 
He has looked at the whole manward, and said. This and that 
and a thousand other things are not saving, but man deter- 
mines the question of salvation by the instrument of '■'■ faith '* 
(Heb. II : 6). And yet, confused as these considerations 
might come to be, he keeps a clear thread of understanding 
held fast among them all. " jFaith " does not interfere with 
^^ grace," for 'faith " itself is a gift of the Redeemer. More- 
over "/^/V/^" is a recognition of "grace." Foreknowledge (8 : 
29) does not interfere with "grace" for foreknowledge is the 
mere omniscience of the Almighty, determining, in His eter- 
nal purpose, its gracious objects. All these things make 
"grace " more complete. And, therefore, with its entire volun- 
tariness, and its entire goodness, and its entire wisdom built 
upon the largest preconception of the result, Paul makes a 
parenthesis not quite in the forthright line of the other reason- 
ing. He is led off into it by that word "grace." (i) " God 
has not cast away His people" for He has not cast away me. 
Moreover (2), He " has not cast away His people" in any sense, 
whom He "foreknew" and for this Paul had called into the 
account abundance of their writings. He is to present (3) a 
third point (v. 11) ; but before he reaches it he goes off upon 
a side consideration. 



CHAPTER XI. 309 

6. But if it be of grace, then it is no more of works ; oth- 
erwise grace is no more grace. 

The whole system of the Jews is toppled over by this asser- 
tion. Paul's bitterness against *' works " expends itself usually 
in two directions ; tirst. upon that whole system of " works " 
which could be brought about in a man by the mere direction 
of the law ; and, second, that maze of ceremonies which had 
grown to be a trust, Paul is not so often as we think allu- 
ding to the merit of works, or a trust to sn^y perfect righteous- 
ness which could satisfy the law, but he is denying certain 
sources of holiness. Good works cannot spring up by the mere 
teaching of the law (2 Cor. 3 : 6) ; nor could good works be 
engendered by the mere emblems of the gospel ^Gal. 5 : 6). 
"If it be of grace." That is " // // be grace:' It is the 
material dative. '' Bj'" (E. V. lS: Re.) is just the furthest 
word possible. ** Then it is no more of works." '* It is no 
more ou/ of works." The word is Ik. If faith in the soul is 
even itself a '^ grace ^'' then " it is no more from works,'' That 
is, to state it in its simplest sense, " works " in the soul are 
themselves a '■^ grace," and, therefore, must be engendered 
graciously ; all that Paul would deny is that, first, the deca- 
logue, and, second, and least, the ceremonies of the Jews, 
could teach a man 'faith" instead of his resorting for it 
directly and at once to the '''grace" of the Divine Redeemer. 

The parenthesis would be too heavy if the remainder of the 
verse (E. V.; see the MSS.) were allowed, but all seem satis- 
fied that that is spurious. 

Paul goes on then to the very harshest quotations. It is 
natural that he should do so. He would not choose such 
language if it were his own, but he is assailing them out of 
their own Scriptures. What he is laboring to beat down is 
the idea that God has not cast away His people in a sense of 
giving over to death millions of Israelitish worshipers. In 
the quotations, dreadful things appeared : first, that men were 
damned who were seeking not to be ; second, that in this pro- 
cess of damnation God actually ** hardened " their hearts ; 
third, that He did this by giving them " a spirit of slumber;" 



3IO ROMANS. 

and, fourth, and worst of all, that saints, delivered by what 
Paul calls ^^ grace j'' are to rejoice, or, what seems to be the 
meaning, are to exult and to imprecate curses, and that in 
the most unfeeling and bitter form. 

Here, of course, is a passage where the cause for calling it 
up, and the responsibility for defending it, are quite different 
things. Paul is talking of a people who were already begin- 
ning their schemes to destroy him. His strong point was 
their own law. He could only tenderly appeal where they held 
divine truth, taught from childhood, and sounding in set sen- 
tences of speech in their synagogues and on every Sabbath. 
Provoke them as he might, he never could provoke them as 
against their law. When, therefore, the time had come when 
such a thing as a lost Jew must be acknowledged, and that 
not simply by a Gentile, but the rather and as a far more 
important thing, under the teaching of an inspired apostle, by 
the true Israelite, and even by the lost Jew himself, it was a 
thing to be supposed that he would pick out strong verses ; 
and if their bitterness was to be explained, he would leave 
that to the skill of their scribes, only pressing the fixed and 
the inevitable in his quotation : — 

7. What then ? That which Israel seeks for, that he 
obtained not; but the election obtained it, and the rest 
were hardened. 8. Even as it is written, God has given 
unto them a spirit of slumber, eyes not to see, and ears 
not to hear unto this day. 9. And David says, — 

Let their table become a snare and a chase. 
And a stumbling-block and a punishment unto them ; 
10. Let their eyes be darkened that they may not see, 
And bow down their back always. 

Comment, however, may follow the more immediate pole- 
mic. The ruder the assault upon their prejudices, the better. 
And as missiles are sometimes left rough, in order that they 
may tear the wound, so Paul counts it sufficient to quote their 
own books, and leave the terrible sentences to go in unex- 
plained. And yet he himself, and especially in that ninth 
chapter, has given the means of explanation, (i) God has 



CHAPTER XL 311 

indeed refused what His people deliberately sought after; but 
Paul has already shown, that, in the first place, the object that 
they sought was wrong, viz., '' a law of righteousness " (9 : 30), 
rather than righteousness itself ; and, second, that the method 
was mistaken; they sought it not by faith (9: 32). (2) In regard 
to ^^ an election,'" and in regard to^' an election'' which seemed 
to have the hard character of an arbitrary choice (9 : 15, 22), 
Paul has smoothed that entirely. He has represented it, and 
that in a very intelligent manner, as guided by foreknowledge. 
'■'■Whojn He did foreknow them He also planned beforehand'' {^\ 
29) ; and then, to show exactly how that foreknowledge oper- 
ated, he has left us to see that it did not interfere with His 
sovereignty, but that it guided it, and the vis a tergo in all king- 
ship being His love, it led Him into those mysterious depths (8: 
38, 39) which could not be revealed to men (Ex. 33: 23), but in 
respect to which He had long ago given assurance to Moses that 
He would foreknow as men and elect as saints and convert as 
sinners the last man of the race that was possible in His eternal 
Kingdom. This was a large excuse. But to the Corinthians 
he had gone further. He had explained (3) what was meant 
by hardening the heart (2 Cor. 4: 4). James had already said 
(i: 13), " Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted 
of God." And Paul, in this text for the Corinthians, speaks 
plainer, and shows that this blinding of the sinner is altogether 
privative. It is not-doing, rather than doing. '' In whom the 
God of this world " (and it is a thousand pities that this has 
been considered not God but the Devil) — '' In whom the God 
of this world," that is, the Supreme, if we may follow Calvin, 
" hath blinded the minds of them which beheve not, ua to /x^ 
avydaai, " SO that there do not shine to them the light of the 
Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." It 
would be a hard thing that God could not direct His own 
activities. And when He condescends to tell us that He does 
the best He can, and does not ^^plan out " a people till He 
"foreknows" the consequences (8: 29), the rhetoric after that 
is of little moment. If an inspired poem calls hopeless impen- 
itence, pouring upon a people a spirit of slumber (Is. 29: 10), 



312 ROMANS. 

the harshness makes little difference after Paul has distinctly 
uttered those generous sentences. And so of the last point (vs. 
9, lo) : — (4) Men would upset the Bible on the ground of the 
imprecatory Psalms (Ps. 109: 7-15, 17-20). In fact, to our sur- 
prise, Barnes, who is sober in many things, is guilty of thisi — 
*' It is not at all improbable that many of those imprecations 
were wrong. David was not a perfect man ; and the Spirit of 
inspiration is not responsible for his imperfections " (Com. 
Rom. in loc.) ! Better certainly than giving up the Bible to 
men's own judgment (for if David in devotional Scripture is 
not to be trusted, then Paul ! then anybody ! Where is the 
TTov (TTw in any of the revelation ?), is it to remember that the 
imperative in the East is an emphatic prediction. When I say, 
even in our own land, " There, now, you just go to the dogs ! " 
I do not mean to command, but to predict— and to deter. 
Christ was not urging Judas when He said, " What thou doest 
do quickly." And when Isaiah says, *' Make the heart of this 
people fat" (Is. 6 : 10), he was by no means instructing in a 
principle of the pastoral care; but He was putting, in the acutest 
form, the prediction of their wickedness. This Psalm is Mes- 
sianic. It is quoted from (Jo. 2:17; 15: 25), and in the most 
express way as to the vinegar for drink (Matt. 27: 34, 48). It 
is utterly absurd that Christ, who was dying for the wicked, 
could be uttering in importunate prayer maledictions against 
them. 

Paul, therefore, may be understood in his purpose (which is 
to show that a Jew may be miserably *' cast off "), without, as 
the first thing, being challenged for a meaning : for not only 
has he taken these bitternesses from the Jews, but he himself 
has gone the farthest in explaining generously their hard 
ideas. 

II. Paul comes now to his third position. He has said (i) 
that Jews were not ''cast off'' m the sense that none were 
saved. He has shown (2) that the Jews were not ''cast off*' 
in the sense that any perished who were " children of the 
promise" (9: 8). And now his position is to be (3) that the 
Jews were not " cast off'' in the sense that any were, except 



CHAPTER XI. 313 

for a necessary purpose of God, or to bring about important 
consequences in the history of His Kingdom. 

To develope this point he asks the categorical question : — 

11. I say then, Did they stumble that they might fall?— 

The evident drift of this inquiry is, Does the fall of anybody, 
and particularly of a Jew, take place for the fall's sake ? or 
out of the resentment of God ? or, as we are too apt to imagine, 
out of His " mere good pleasure " ? Paul replies at once: — 

11.— By no means; but that by their fault salvation 
might be to the Gentiles to provoke them to jealousy. 

This chapter has seemed puerile. That one man's " fault " 
could be the "salvation" of another, and, above all, that a 
man's own sin , could save him, as, for example, his being 
provoked to jealousy, seemed impossible ; and we confess to 
a great deal of study before we could be tempted to treat the 
passage. We come to these results: — First (i), that Paul does 
not mean to teach that he provoked the Jews to jealousy 
"in order to save some of them" (v. 14). On the contrary, 
this was a part of the apostle's argument. The Jews were 
furious. They were hunting him in all parts of the earth. 
And well they might. He had stood by them in trampling the 
faith, and had incontinently turned traitor. Doubtless they 
attributed to him the lowest principle. Now, to handle such 
a case demanded unspeakable carefulness. We have seen 
how he pleaded against them their chiefest idol ; I mean " the 
law" which the Jew was always worshiping. Quoting from 
that is the strength of our epistle. It is an unnoticed clever- 
ness in Paul how he turns against them their own furious feel- 
ing. He does not conceive it broadly, or flash it on them in 
an ungoverned sense ; but he unearths it out of their own 
Law-giver. Who notices the sentence ^^ I will provoke you to 
jealousy by them that are no people'' (10 : 19 ; Deut. 32 : 21) ? 
Paul's recurrence to that very word napa^TjUu, is, very much like 
all his other sentences, an appeal to their cherished writings. 
If he were not persecuted, he would not be a prophet. And, 
therefore, he returns to the expression. In the present text. 



314 ROMANS. 

it does not mean that their fault was the heathen man's salva- 
tion, in such a sense as that, by a sort of ricochet, in saving 
him it might save them also ; but simply that it was fulfilling 
their Scripture. We cannot see that it was a wholesome 
thought that provoking a man to jealousy would save him. 
But we do see that rousing the Jew to the discovery that his 
very fury was predicted, and that, as is expressed again just 
below, Paul might by his ministry to the Greeks provoke him, 
as the prophets had foretold, and also save him (v. 14), would 
be consistent teaching, and strictly in the vein of all Paul's 
Old Testament appeals. 

But then on the other hand (2), one man's fall being 
another man's recovery, if not too broadly stated, holds 
out a thought easily discernible in many Scriptures. Every 
man's fate is to minister to the gospel. If he lives, he 
will bless ; if he dies, he will not curse (Lu. 19 : 24). 
Solomon has this thing in wonderful cleverness of speech. 
He calls the saved man the rich ; and he calls the lost man 
the poor. And he does this in many unnoticed and gospel 
asseverations (Prov. 28 : 8, 11 ; 29 : 16, see Com.). " The rich 
and the poor meet together," he says, the idea being that 
they are necessary in the developments of heaven. And he 
adds, confirming his profound idea, " the Lord is the Maker 
of them all " (Prov. 22 : 2). 

Now in this epistle to the Romans it is not hard to illus- 
trate these important considerations. Paul says, " For this: 
very purpose (viz., one of " mercy,'' v. 16), have I raised thee up, 
that I might show in thee my power " (v. 17). The old prophets 
spoke of giving " men for them " (Is. 43 : 4). And Paul says, 
" But if God, willing to explain the wrath, &c., &c.," (9-: 22)., 
Temperately, and in carefully expressed ways, we are to learn 
from the passage that the damnation of Israel, like every other 
historical event, would be overruled for good, and that the 
contumely of the Jews would not interrupt, but further, the 
breaking down of walls, and the broader dissemination of 
Messiah's mysteries. 

" But " {6k) is the next word in the Greek. Paul is expect- 



CHAPTER XI. 315 

ing to explain, not only that they did not stumble for the very 
sake of the fall, but as Jews nationally they had not stumbled 
that they should fall at all. They had lapsed, or been guilty 
of a ^' faulty" but their purpose as a people had all to be ful- 
filled. We must understand, as incident to the whole, that 
^^ glory, honor and peace (was to be) to the Jew first'' (Rom. 2 : 
10). The gospel was to begin at Jerusalem (Lu. 24 : 47). Juda- 
ism was not to lose by its harsh tutelage ; but for generations 
to come was to furnish root and branch in the great " olive 
tree.'* And if its casting away was to be helpful to the Greek, 
more abundantly, by every principle of light, its return would 
be, whenever in any age or place it discerned the gospel. This 
is what Paul is busy upon in the verse that follows : — 

12. But if their fault be wealth for a world, and their loss 
wealth for Gentiles, how much more their fulness ! 

13. "But " is the opening word. Paul seems to remember 
that he is speaking not to the Jews, but rather in the great 
Western Capital to a Gentile mass. He ventures the same 
ideas therefore in an adjusted method : — 

13. But I am speaking to you Gentiles. On the one 
hand, therefore, to the degree that I am an apostle of Gen- 
tiles I honor my ministry. 14. If in any way I provoke 
to jealousy my own flesh, and save some of them. 

Such influences were honorable in themselves. The pro- 
voking was prophesied of (see 10 : 19), and the saving had 
already begun, and one, as we have seen, is not to be con- 
nected too closely with the other. " I honor my ministry " 
because or " for"— 

15. For, if the casting away of them be a reconciling of 
a world, what shall the receiving be but a life from 
among the dead ? 

The rescue should be rejoiced in as for itself. 

16. " On the other hand " we should suspect as much from 
all the array of the history. Israel had always been a holy 
nation to God. God had always converted all the true Israel. 
Paul had put his hand upon the key when he had asserted 



3i6 ROMANS. 

that there was much advantage in being a Jew, and explained 
it by the one speech that ^^ the oracles were believed'' (3 : 2). 
That was the acme of their blessing. Not that they were con- 
verted as a race ; but that they were converted as a race more 
than any other. And that this work would go on. " On the 
other hand ; " {6k) responding to the iikv of the thirteenth. " On 
the one hand'' Paul's ministry was honorable as diverted from 
his race, and ''^ on the other" it was hopeful as to that race 
itself, because. now and for some time after, there was every 
sign in that race itself of eminent blessing, because, — 

16. On the other hand if the first fruits be holy, then 
also the lump; and if the root be holy, then also the 
branches. 

This seems to be a profound acknowledgment that holiness 
in one age of a land is to bless it and not curse it in another. 
Holiness never curses. So the idea of a first fruits was, that 
they were an earnest (Eph. i : 14). Breaking off of the lump 
(Num. 15 : 20, 21) meant that of the rest there should be a 
blessing. Such was the inspired metaphor. And the Jews 
responded to it in their present condition. They still had 
advantages (3 : i, 2). Having furnished all converts in the 
past, they furnished most in the present. And Paul, from the 
general principles of grace, would argue, not that all Jews 
would be saved, for Judaism in a very serious respect had 
been "broken off;" not either, as some believe, that all will 
be who are living at the last day ; but that many might hope 
to be. Paul speaks in this sort of fashion : — "What knowest 
thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband " (i Cor. 
7 : 16)? And, again, of the progeny of such a marriage, 
'' Now are (your children) holy " (v. 14) ; by which he does 
not mean that the children would be saved (any more than he 
intends here that all the Jews would be converted), but simply 
that they were likely to be saved, and " holy," therefore, in 
this promise. If the Jews had furnished an airapxij to God, 
quoad hoc that was a fine chance for more ; and if the root 
(was) holy," no matter how far back the piety, so might " the 
branches " be, and so would they be likely to be, as of an hppa^bv 



CHAPTER XI. 317 

of grace, however hid and trampled by abounding wicked- 
ness. 

This is turned over differently in his address to the Gentiles. 
"If they (the Jews) abide not in unbelief, they shall be 
grafted in " (v. 23). But that is a most important " if; " and 
it seems not much helped by the yap that follows : — (" For) 
God is able to graft them in again." But let us translate 
the eight verses : — 

17. But if some of the branches were brojien off, and 
thou, being a wild olive, wast grafted in among them, 
and becamest partaker of the root of the fatness of the 
olive, 18. Boast not against the branches ; but whether 
thou boast, it is not thou the root bearest, but the root 
thee. 19. Thou wilt say then. Branches were broken off 
that I might be grafted in. 20. Good ; by unbelief they 
were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not high- 
minded, but fear. 21. For if God spared not the natural 
branches, neither will He spare thee. 22. Behold, there- 
fore, goodness and severity in God ; upon them that fell, 
severity, but upon thee, God's goodness, if thou remainest 
in the goodness ; otherwise then thou also shalt be cut off. 
23. But they also, if they remain not in unbelief, shall be 
grafted in ; for God is able to graft them in again. 24. For 
if thou wert cut out of the olive, wild by nature, and wast 
grafted, against nature, into a good olive tree, how much 
rather shall they who are natural be grafted into their 
own olive tree. 

17. "The olive." This is Paul's only mention oi ^^ the 
olive " as an emblem of the church. But Zechariah (Zech. 4 : 
12), and John (Rev. 11 : 4), the former long before, and the 
latter long after, have quite established the metaphor. 
" Grafted." There is no grafting in a way like this. Graft- 
ing is from a good tree set upon a bad. Paul reverses the 
figure ; some say from a habit in the East. But if wild 
branches were set upon a decayed stock, and both were fresh- 
ened (see Hodge), that still would not be the gospel. Christ 
is anything but decayed. Besides, we doubt the result. And 
it would be what Paul disowns. The branch would be bear- 
ing the root, and not the root the branch (v. 18). The main 



3i8 . ROMANS. 

feature of a graft is, that, " broken oflF" from one tree, it will 
grow upon another. The Gentile '•^broken off*' from his own 
people, is to grow upon the Jews, that is upon that Great Jew. 
There had " come out of Zion the Deliverer" (v. 26). A 
Great Jew had become church, — Head and members (Eph. i : 
23). And natural Jews had been '* broken off,'' that inward 
Jews (2 : 29) might be '■^ grafted in'' Paul builds a challenge to 
universal humanity. 18. "Thou bearest not the root." There 
is an ellipsis in the passage. "If thou boast," remember — 
or "if thou boast," alas for you ! ''Thou bearest not the root, 
but the root thee." 20. "Good:" a very strong Greek 
expression (/ca;iwf) " beautiful ; " or, as we would say, " exactly ! " 
This Paul applies to their conceit, — " The branches were 
broken oflF that I might be grafted in." '' Exactly so," says 
the apostle. But the whole difference is made by "faith," and 
that is a loving recognition of the grace of the Sanctified. 
21. "For if God spared not the natural branches" {mra 
^vaiv). This word pmic is chameleon-like. Men are said to be 
" /ews by nature " (Gal. 2 : 15), which means, as here, " natu- 
ral branches," which have actually to be " broken off," — so natur- 
ally do they come under the grace of God. Men are said to 
be dead "by nature" (Eph. 2 : 3), which means, much more 
emphatically, by birth and reality lost. Men are said to " do 
by nature the things contained in the law" (2 : 14), which is 
heaven-wide again. Men ''by nature" (v. 21) do no such 
thing. ""By nature," though it is the same word i^vaiq^ means in 
that second chapter " by natural evidences," or " under the teach- 
ing of natural facts " (Rom. i : 20). We must be on our guard, 
therefore, about ^voiq wherever we see it. 22. "Otherwise." 
'ETret does not mean " otherwise" " Otherwise " is the proper 
word to supply, but it is another case of ellipsis. "Then " is 
the sense of md. And with " otherwise " supplied we arrive 
at the legitimate sense. " Otherwise (then) grace is no more 
grace" (Rom. 11 : 6). " Otherwise (then) it is of no strength 
at all" (Heb. 9 : 17) ; and so in the present passage, "other- 
wise, then, thou also shalt be cut ofiT." 23. " For God is 
able;" dwaroq, the word previously noticed (9 : 22). There 



CHAPTER XI. 319 

is nothing that forbids Him. It will be consistent and actu- 
ally the fact that many shall be saved. 

25. This consistency which man could not certainly deter- 
mine, namely that God could still save Jews, and not let them be 
absolutely cursed, Paul wraps up under the name of a " mys- 
tery," which is an old name for anything that required a spec- 
ial revelation. It could not be known beforehand that " blind- 
ness (only) in part (would happen) unto Israel, while the 
fulness of the Gentiles was being gathered in." Paul ap- 
proaches this with one of his set phrases of appeal : — " I do 
not wish you not to know." 

25. For I do not wish you, brethren, not to know this 
mystery, lest your thoughtfulness be confined to your- 
selves, that blindness in part has happened to Israel while 
the fulness of the Gentiles be entering in. 

What is the real fact about the gospel ? There is no arrest, 
as far as is doctrinally revealed, of the full gospel to both 
Jews and Gentiles (i: 16). There is no cessation of grace 
(10: II, 13). There is no advantage to the Jew except that 
many believed (3: 2). And there is no supplanting by the 
Greek, except that Jew and Gentile were alike brought into the 
Kingdom (10: 12). We utterly deny a prospective in-sweeping 
of the Israelites. And if any one begs us for an immediate 
reason, we answer, Because Christ puts us on our immediate 
guard lest the Judgment surprise us at any moment. How can 
that be true, and all these other things ? We believe there is 
no prophecy in the New Testament Scriptures. And if anyone 
is shocked at this, we beg him to begin back at the original 
idea. If any moment may usher the Redeemer in the clouds 
(Matt. 24: 44; Lu. 12: 40; 21: 34, 35), and the dead, small 
and great, may be judged, what mockery to stuff the time 
with events. We believe there is no Millennium. We believe 
there is no personal reign. We believe there is no solidarity 
for the Jew, or geographic trifling about the rocks of Pales- 
tine. And we beg any one who testifies his disgust, simply 
to answer one Question, — How can I be listening for the 
trumpet (i Cor. 15: 52), or waiting for my Lord in " the air " 



520 ROMANS. 

(i Thess. 4: 18), or supposing in my short life that the dead 
may be raised (i Thess. 4: 17), when there are shoals of unfin- 
ished events, and the ^^ seals'' and the '■^ viols " and millennial 
splendor of the church and the restoration of the tribes and 
the terracing of Palestine, are all to be interpolated before 
my rising ? If I had to be hanged, and it might be instantly, 
and the knock at my cell be at any moment, it would have 
a queer influence to know that a new jail had to be built, 
and no end of events happen before I or anyone else could 
ascend the scaffold. We believe all these unveilings are pic- 
torial gospels, and, as in this very passage that we treat, there 
is some Greek that turns aside the superstition that has been 
imagined. 

" Confined to yourselves." There is a difficulty about the 
MSS. The majority read -Kapd (E. V.). The weightier read hv 
(Re.), and are adopted by later scholars. The expression 
<l)p6vL[jLoi kv or (j)p6vtiuot napd is exceedingly important in another 
passage (12: 16). We do not think the meaning '■^ wise in your 
own conceits " (E. V. & Re.) brings out the mind that was 
intended. The word napd means before^ as before a judge (see 
Jelf). The meaning of the apostle seems to be that we are 
not to be thoughtful nobis judicibus. And as making our- 
selves the judge is very apt to make the award for ourselves^ 
this seems to be the main idea of the reasoning. Don't imagine 
the Jew to be given up, lest ye be thoughtful only for your- 
selves. Solomon says, *' Be not wise by thine own eyes " (Prov. 
3:7; LXX. napd creavTO)), that is, by looking at things through 
your own vision. And when we come to the important pas- 
sage (12: 16), we shall find that this understanding is vital. 
Paul will be giving a recipe for rejoicing with them that do 
rejoice, and weeping with those that weep ; and he will end 
causally in this, " Be not thoughtful for (napd) yourselves.'^ 
*' Blindness in part.'* That is, the Jews, like everyone else, 
are some of them saved and some of them lost. " While.*' 
Not " until " (E. V. & Re.). Here is where the ''Restoration " 
idea is imagined. "Axpicov may mean '' while*' (Heh. y. 13; 2 
Mace. 14: 10). So may the aorist subjunctive, elaeWri, have the 



CHAPTER XI. 321 

bearing imputed to it (Jelf, §. 401, 3, Obs. i). "And so all 
Israel shall be saved." Jews are to be gathered ^^ while" 
Gentiles are being gathered ; and so '^ all Israel^' not in the 
" Restoration " sense, but in the widest sense (Jo. 10: 16), Jews 
and Gentiles, are to be converted and gathered in. " The 
children of the fleshy those same are not children of God'\()\ 8). 
"They are not all Israel that are of Israel "(9: 6). "He is 
not a Jew who is one outwardly" (2: 28). And, therefore, 
Paul has given us abundant scope to look for such passages 
as this. ^^All Israel'' (will have been) saved'' when Jews have 
been going in '■'"while" Gentiles were going in, and all Jews 
^'- inwardly" (2: 29), whether Greeks or Israelites, shall have 
accepted each his place in the everlasting Kingdom. 

26. And so all Israel shall be saved '*— 

Now there is a further logic in the clause that follows. Paul 
had said that God never ''^foreknew " any other Israel than the 
men who were converted. He draws in now the further 
thought that the very "covenant" of God was expressed and 
intended only "when (he took) away their sins" :— 

26.— As it has been written:— 

There will come out of Zion the Deliverer ; 
He will turn away ungodlinesses from Jacob. 

27. And this covenant with them on my part 
Is when I take away their sins. 

Paul quotes pregnantly; sometimes from three or four pas- 
sages digested into one. He has in this quotation three or 
four points to fix. First, that salvation comes out of Zion. 
There were in the Old Testament Scriptures two beautiful 
figures — one Moriah, the other Zion. These landmarks are 
kept well apart in Scripture. Moriah was the temple site, and 
the temple was for the exhibition of the Almighty. David 
memorably expresses it when he says, " In His temple every 
whit of it (marg.) uttereth glory " (Ps. 29: 9). The Jew, when 
he wanted to inquire, inquired in the temple (Ps. 27: 4). Zion 
was a very different metaphor. Zion was the seat of kingship. 
Moreover, it was the seat of kingship that was granted to 



32 2 ROMANS. 

Jerusalem. When the King came in person, He began at 
Jerusalem (Lu. 24: 47). When the apostles began to minister, 
it was "/(? the Jew first'' (Acts 3: 26). And there was great 
wisdom in this. Paul, when he inquired for synagogues (Acts 
13: 5; 14: i), knew where were the great key-points. And this 
eminent beginning was often prophesied. " The Lord bless 
thee out of Zion " (Ps. 134 : 3). " The Lord shall send 
the rod of thy strength out of Zion " (no : 2). These were 
all sources for the inspired quotation. The song exclaims, 
'•'' Oh that salvation were come out of Zion " (Ps. 14 : 7). And 
Paul, as the first thing, was quick in the concession that the 
Jews began the light, and sent it prosperously out of their 
Holy Hill. But, secondly, the very object of the light was to 
turn them from their transgressions. They were no favorites 
of the Prince, but enemies. This was wonderfully marked in 
all the prophetic passages. " The Redeemer (should) come to 
Zion," but how ? not to the Jews as Jews, but distinctly as is 
summarized in Paul's quotation, " To them that turn from 
transgression in Jacob " (Is. 59: 20). And, third, the very 
term of the ** covenant," and that anciently delivered, was 
that it was only a "<r<?z'^;2«;2^" with the actuaV subjects of its 
blessings. " This is the covenant that I will make with the 
house of Israel, — I will put my law in their inward parts " 
(Jer. 31 : -^Ti)' Recollect ; this was their own Old Testament 
script. And it agreed with all the rest of his positions, 
** God (had) 7tot cast away His people whom He foreknew " (11 : 
2) ; and Paul, obscurely somewhat, because he is brief, takes 
in all these bearings under that word " when " (v. 27). " And 
this covenant with them on my part is when I take away 
their sins." 

28. According to the gospel, indeed, they are enemies for 
your sakes ; but according to the election they are beloved 
for the fathers' sake. 

We are shown the folly of *' electing love " as conceived of 
as a distinct affection. There are but two loves, benevolence 
and esteem ; I mean but two sorts, outside of family affection ; 
and what a fine support to this idea that we find God in this 



CHAPTER XI. 323 

particular sentence loving and hating the same people. We 
have already explained (9 : 13) that this rhetoric of inspired 
men is a terse way of expressing a mere likeness to love, in the 
matter of its consequence. " All they that hate me love death " 
(Prov. 8: 36). "According to the gospel," that is, the great 
announced facts of the heavenly message, " they are enemies 
for your sake." That is, they will perish, like their fathers, 
if they do not believe ; and perish in certain discoverable 
senses for the sake of you Gentiles ; that is, in opening your 
way ; just as all the buried talents are given to all the im- 
proved talents (Matt. 25 : 28) in ten thousand senses in nature 
and in grace. "But according to the election," that is, for 
the very purpose for which they were originally chosen, and 
with the same results as have always happened, the Jew will 
gain by his original calling as a people. They had furnished 
the very Christ of prophecy, and the very saints for all the 
apostleships. 

29. For the gifts and calling of God are without repen- 
tance ; 

And if they did not continue to be first, it must be, like death 
in the Wilderness (Josh. 5 : 4), in strange contrast with their 
triumphs at Migdol. 

30. For as you once did not believe God, but now have 
obtained mercy, these being unbelieving, 31. So also now 
these have been unbelieving, that with your obtaining 
mercy they also might obtain mercy. 

'' Through " (E. V.) and " l>y " (Re.) are unnecessarily 
strong in both these verses, for there is no ek or dcd, and the 
nouns are in the dative. The dative often implies the mere 
condition of the circumstances (see Goodwin). That is enough. 
We, therefore, employ the participle. " These being unbe- 
lieving." We might exaggerate beyond the sense the idea of 
the sin of the Jews as promoting grace for the Gentiles. 

32. For God has shut up all in unbelief that He might 
have mercy upon all. 

So Paul finishes this catholic argument. "All" is a very 



324 ROMANS. 

favorite word with him. We are all sinners (3 : 23), and all 
punishable for sin (2 : 9), and all people that may believe (i : 
16) ; we are all equal under the law (2 : 11), and all open to the 
gospel (10 : 12, 13). We are all certain to reject it (i Cor. 2 : 
14). We are all instructed by the law (2: 14), and all incapa- 
ble of being saved by it (Gal. 2: 21). We must allh^ saved by 
works (2 : 13), but we must all be led to do them by grace (8 : 
7 ; 10 : 4), and not by the mere commandment (3 : 20 ; 8 : 3). 
" Works of the law " in the sense of what the law could stir us 
up to do, no one will perform (3 : 19), and therefore by the 
law, left nakedly to itself, is only " the knowledge of sin " (3 : 
20). All Israel will be saved in the sense that God ever 
intended Israel (11 : 26). All else will perish (11 : 7). Alt 
will perish from unbelief (9 : 32) ; and all not directly but by 
His ** knowledge " (v. 33) beforehand *' God has shut up in 
unbelief; " so that all who are saved are objects of His regen- 
erating "mercy." 

33. O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and 
knowledge of God ! how unsearchable are His judgments, 
and His ways past finding out ! 34. For who has known 
the mind of the Lord? or who has been His counselor? 
35. Or who has first given to Him and will have it returned 
to him again ? 36. For out of Him and by means of Him 
and with respect to Him are all things. To Him be tho 
glory forever. Amen. 



CHAPTER XII. 

1. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercy of 
God- 

I am careful of this collocation. I wish to bring out all the 
beauties of the passage. If I had translated certain verses 
(see chap. 9) as they have always been translated, no wonder 
that this appeal should go on escaping Us. What have we 
been taught to believe ? Why, that God does as He pleases ; 
not in the sense of a wise pleasure, or, if we might properly 



CHAPTER XII. 325 

understand it, of the good pleasure of Heaven, but in a sense 
that has utterly destroyed Paul's beautiful argument. Paul 
had summoned one of the spectacles of the gray past (Ex. 2iZ • 
18-23). No one was more familiar with the deep things of 
the Almighty. Doubtless he understood those pictures of 
Solomon, '^ It is the glory of Gods to cover over a thing, but 
the glory of Kings to search a thing out "(Prov. 25 : 2). This 
passage of our epistle is cousin-german to the words that fol- 
low : *' The heavens as to height, and the earth as to depth, 
and the heart of Kings there is no searching " (Prov. 25 : 3). 
Now, remembering that God was exhibiting this same truth 
in dramatic scenery, hiding the Law-giver in a rock and print- 
ing on him the symbol that only God's " back parts " could be 
revealed, it seems a distressing failure that the whole point of 
this should be lost by our ruinous English. God had said, 
" Only a whisper can be heard of (me) " (Job. 26 : 14). Solo- 
mon had said, God would like to save everybody. It is the 
glory of God to cover things, but of God as King to search 
them out. Paul breaks out in the words we have rendered, 
" O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowl- 
edge of God ! How unsearchable are His judgments," cov- 
ering over sorrow with the black pall that Solomon threw over 
the King. What a shame it is that when God gave the Law- 
giver the only possible light, and Solomon repeated it, and 
Paul quoted it as his text, we should have so lucklessly 
quenched it all. God is absolutely mysterious ; but what 
matters that, if He saves all He can ? Paul had multiplied this 
in splendid verses. God cannot explain, but He can assert. 
And He has said " / will have mercy on whomsoever I can have 
mercy y And Paul elaborates it, that Providence is an abyss, 
but that this light plays over it. He is doing all that is ^^ pos- 
sible for Him " (9 : 22). What could He do more than He is 
striving to accomplish ? (Is. 5:4). It is not of the willing but 
of the mercy showing God (9 : 16). And Paul sums up with 
another glorious assumption ; — " One man whom He has a desire 
after He shows mercy to, and another man whom He has a desire 
after He hardens "(9 : 18), leaving us to the sad conclusion 



326 ROMANS. 

that the same merciful sun needfully produces calm and 
tempest. 

1. "I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God.'* 
With the comments we have given this is a glorious appeal. 
Why quarrel with so kind a King? " How unsearchable are 
His judgments ! " And yet, under that black night, He lets 
this flash out to us, — I am doing the best I can. " The heart 
of Kings is unsearchable," but down in its hid depths this I 
will reveal, that even in such a thing as eternal death, it is all 
that can be arranged : I am " not willing that any should 
perish; " and, still, eternal sorrow is as necessary as the very 
substance of my being. 

These things in God are also the great things in man. 
Benevolence and love of holiness, which are the philosophical 
translations of love to man and love to God, are what the 
Proverb calls "chains about our neck" (Prov. i: 9). Heaven 
would be impossible without this chamber of man's best being. 
And as to the Almighty, these same two commandments supply 
His life. They give Him a reason to be. He would not 
create without them. They supply His name, " God is love." 
They supply a heaven to us ; for we shall rejoice at the 
memory of His holiness. They supply a heaven to Him. For 
God could not be happy, any more than His creation, unless 
He had Himself to think of, and Himself in that noblest part. 
His boundless affection for all His creatures. 

Now Paul puts his finger upon the noblest incentive to good 
-works when he writes that appeal, '■''By the mercies of God'' 
Here is a King under enormous difficulties, with a boundless 
administration, over unending Kingdoms of life and light. 
There are puzzles in such an administration that no archangel 
could fathom. We might know that there would be. God 
confesses them. He admits that there must be ''exceeding 
greatness of power," even in our poor world, to save us who 
believe. Out of the darkness of such a system He cannot 
explain, but He can protest. And He places before our minds 
for worship that sweetest of all conceptions, a God that has 
xlone the best for everything since the world was made; a God 



CHAPTER XII. 327 

that would be broken-hearted if He had not; a God propped 
up by the expression " What could have been done more for 
my vineyard that I have not done in it ? " infinite in possession, 
if not now, hereafter, and infinite in work, if not here, in the 
ages future, and yet, more than any mother, pitying the lost, 
and yearning over him as though there were none but he, and 
doing everything on earth He can to save from perishing the 
poorest and meanest of the sinful. Paul's appeal, therefore, 
is based upon the body of his epistle; — '^/ beseech you, there- 
fore, brethren, by the mercies of God." — 

1 .—That ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, 
acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 

Christ was obedient in His death. We must be obedient in 
our life. "Reasonable." The reasons we have been giving. 
'' If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another " 
(i Jo. 4: 11). 

2. And be not conformed to this world, but be ye trans- 
formed in the renewing of the mind, that you may ap- 
prove what is the will of G-od, good and acceptable and 
perfect. 

" World ;" (alwv), literally meaning age. There may be a 
thought of that; for the ^^ world'' is better than its people. 
But aliov and Kdafioq Can hardly make out the distinction, for they 
are occurring similarly. Love not the Koaixoq, John says (i Jo. 
2 : 15); so that we must give up the formal distinction. 
" Renewing ; " a material dative. " Be ye transformed," not 
"by the renewing" (E. V. & Re.), but, as though it were 
beth essetitice, '■'■Be ye transforined'' in that shape, so that it shall 
consist "/// the rejiewing of the mi?id." "Approve." Not 
*^ prove" (E. V. & Re.). ^'Approve" is nearer to the sense. 
The greatest change upon our planet is that by which men 
learn to ^^ approve" God (Job 42: 6). 

3. For I say, by the grace given unto me, to every one 
that is among you, that he think not of himself more 
highly than he ought to think, but that he think so as 
to think soberly, according as God has distributed to 
each a measure of faith. 



328 ROMANS. 

Paul gives himself as a clinic. Intending to refer every- 
thing to "grace," he gives himself as an example; for 
he implies that it is " by the grace given unto (him)" that 
he is led to instruct. Because, as one must be " transformed in 
the renewing of the mind'' before one could '■^approve'' either 
God or man, so now all thought or act is to have its "measure" 
in the amount of " faith." "Of himself" is not in the Greek, 
but vTTefj(j)povEiv means to be high-minded (see the Lexicons). Paul 
intends to forbid estimating anything above the measure of 
its piety. We are all members of Christ, and are to estimate 
our doings only as they flow from Him. 

4. For as we have many members in one body, but all 
the members have not the same oface, 5. So we who are 
many are one body in Christ, but, as regards each, mem- 
bers one of another 6. But having gifts differing accord- 
ing to the grace which is given to us, whether prophecy, 
according to the proportion of faith, 7. Or service, in 
the service, or the teacher, in the teaching, 8. Or the 
exhorter, in the exhortation, the giver, in simplicity, the 
ruler, in diligence, the mercy-shewer, in cheerfulness. 

Such is the Greek ; and the mass of italics (E. V.) continued 
in the Revision, are quite without warrant. And, at any rate, 
where is the great point in saying, " Or ministry^ let us wait on 
our ministering " ? The apostle is showing that we must 
estimate ourselves '^according to the grace given.'' He teaches 
that we are not to boast in being members of Christ, but to 
ask. What sort of members? He sees that the members of 
the mystical church have very different office; and claims that 
each particular office be measured by its ''grace "; "prophecy, 
by its faith ; service (by its) service ; the teacher by his 
actual teaching; the giver, by a sweet simplicity; the 
ruler, by diligence ; the mercy-shewer, by cheerfulness. *» 
Through this hard-pan measuring, which is up from the bot- 
tom and down to a basis in the actual grace, Paul illustrates 
our thinking soberly, and rates successful service "-as God has 
given to everyone the measure of faith " (v. 3). 

9. Let love be without hypocrisy. 



CHAPTER XII, 329 

Notice the grammar of the apostle. Just below (v. 15) it 
will be exceedingly important. Participles should have their 
proper sense ; for that will give us long sentences of an ex- 
planatory kind, instead of our chopping up the chapter into 
short imperatives. 

9 .—Abhorring that which is evil ; cleaving to that which is 
good ; 10. In love of the brethren being tenderly affection- 
ate to each other; in honor preferring one another; 11. 
Not slow in diligence ; fervent in the spirit ; serving the 
Iiord ; 12. Rejoicing in hope ; patient in tribulation ; urgent 
in prayer; 13. Participating in the necessities of the 
saints; hunting up ways to be kind to strangers; 14. 
Bless them that persecute you ; bless and curse not. 

*« Abhorring." The "evil" meant is the only positively 
abhorrent " m/." The word "tenderly affectionate" {M- 
•aropyoL) means, usually, affection of near kindred. Paul is well 
sustained by his Master, " For whosoever shall do the will of 
my Father, the same is my mother and sister and brother " 
(Matt. 12 : 50). ^'■Business'' (E. V.) is quite too free in the 
eleventh verse. The word is cTzovdi], and there can be no objec- 
tion to what is literal, viz. haste^ " diligence." Important 
MSS. have Ka^pw (" time "), which would make quite a different 
meaning. But " serving the Lord " (/ct^p^w) has the precedence 
of claim ; and the usual objection that it would break what is 
special into a clause that is too general, will not hold. In the 
heat of work to remember that it is for God, is quite as spe- 
cial as the heat or the work, and quite as needful a waking up 
as any point of what might seem more special duty. 12. 
** Urgent" (TrpoanapTepovvTeg) means pressing well 07t. We leave 
our prayers too often like eggs in the sand. We are to ex- 
pect, and insist, and inquire, and repeat, and in fact claim, 
when we present a petition. Jacob was TrpoaKaprepuv when he 
became a Prince in Israel. 13. '^ Coi7imunicating to " (E. V. & 
Re.) is classic and common, but no more correct than " par- 
ticipating in" (see Rom. 15: 27), and not so expressive. 
" Hunting " is more than *' ready to be kind'' because it is a 
pursuing after occasions for it, as in the chase. It is more 



330 ROMANS. 

than for hospitality's sake in its modern sense (E. V. & Re.), 
for it is for (ptXo^evlav, or love of the stranger. " Hospitality '* 
{hospes) once meant that. 14. "Bless, &e." Paul, usually, 
keeps the difficult duty to the last. 

15. But now a still more necessary parsing ! To give 
his meaning Paul takes us out of this catena of participles, 
and shapes an infinitive. There is created a most inter- 
esting passage. Men have swept it into the round of mere 
imperatives (E. V. & Re.). But why ? It would not be nor- 
mal. Here is a most careful writer. He carries the logic of 
precision to what is high-strained and artificial (Gal. 3: 16). 
Where could be the motive for the infinitive {Kaipeiv), espe- 
cially if all these participles were to be taken in an imperative 
sense ? Paul would be wearied out with a broken rhetoric; and 
with inevitable disgust, would recoil from such an infinitive with 
a jussive purpose. In fact there is no such infinitive. Kaipeiv, 
in its use as a salutation, is altogether another thing. It is a 
declared and understood ellipsis. We may supply Tii-yu. Mod- 
erns say, '' Send greeting," till they get tired of so much formal 
speech, and say simply '' Greeting! " No one pretends that that 
gives it as a participle, and with a new efficiency. Nor can we 
quote Phil. 3 : 16. On the contrary, that is weightily the other 
way. Our versions read, " Let us walk by the same rule; let us 
mind the same thing" (E. V. & Re.). The Revision omits the 
half, but quoad the point at issue they agree perfectly. Yet when 
we look at the sense, both versions are misleading. Paul is 
imagining two degrees of knowledge, a knowledge not yet 
reached, and one already imparted. He says, " As far as we be 
perfect let us think thus; and if in anything ye think otherwise, 
God will reveal even this unto you. Nevertheless whereto we 
have already attained, in order to walk orderly {infinitive^ by the 
same rule, in order to think {infinitive^ the same, be ye followers, 
brethren, of me, &c." (Phil. 3: 16, 17). Nothing could be more 
convincing, or could be more evincive of the purpose of the 
apostle. And precisely similar is his rhetoric \\i the present 
instance. He does not wish to command rejoicing, and therefore, 
he does not use, but scrupulously avoids, the practical impera- 



CHAPTER XII. 331 

ative. And he does not command, because there is a habit of 
holy writ which he scrupulously follows. God does indeed com- 
mand us to do abstract things. He commands us to love (Matt. 
22 : 37), and commands us to hate (Ps. 97 : 10), and com- 
mands us to rejoice (Phil. 4 : 4), and commands us to believe 
(Jo. 14 : i) ; just as the ill gotten imp in the fable commands 
the poor man to break his faggot, without instructing him to 
take it apart. But God, when He comes down to practical 
detail, commands the more voluntary things, which lead by 
promise to those less under the compass of the will. For 
example, He commands us to repent ; but, instead of teaching 
us to stand up upon the floor and by a sudden spiritual wrench 
to enact repentance, God unravels to us the means. He tells 
us the great method of repentance; viz. to beg God for it. 
He tells us the great act of repentance, namely, to look for it 
to Christ. He takes to pieces the more abstract whole, and 
tells us to pray and to work for our soul's entire surrender unto 
God. And now exactly so the apostle. The infinitive was 
never more prescriptively in place. He does not mean, 
" Rejoice with them that do rejoice " (E. V. & Re.) ; because he 
is going to give directions how to do it. He does not send a 
man among the mourners, and say, Now " weep : " or among- 
the dancers, a poor forlorn wretch, and say. Now " rejoice ; " 
but he gives the man the recipe for attaining to that which, at 
the start, would be impossible : — 

15. In order to rejoice with them that do rejoice, and to 
weep with them that weep, 16. Thinking the same things 
for each other, not thinking high things, but being car- 
ried along by lowly things, be not thoughtful just for 
yourselves. 

This is a Kohinoor, I don't send you to a spiritual feast- 
making, and command you on the spot to ^' rejoice j " nor'do I 
admit you to a deadly Baca, and cry out to you at once to 
" weep J " but I give you directions for those stages of approach 
which fit you for the act when you arrive. Thought is alto- 
gether voluntary. Accustom yourself to think for other peo- . 
pie. When you make a bargain, think for the other side. 1\\ 



332 ROMANS. 

scheming for your life, scheme for your clan or for your race, 
which is perishing. Like the very fowls on your place call up 
the whole brood when you find anything good. That plainly 
is Paul's device. " In order to rejoice with " other people, 
learn the art of thinking for them when you are thinking for 
yourself. And hence the Great Apostle arranges other parti- 
ciples with even deeper knowledge and profounder principle 
as among men. i6. "Not thinking high things." Mul- 
titudes think grand things for others ; but, first, they must do 
grand things for themselves. Fortune first ! and while that 
IS making, they are dogs ! Scholars, when they have learned, 
merchants, when they are rich, the Congressman, when in the 
Senate, or the miser, when he is dead, are all going to will 
great things. The apostle forbids it. " In order to rejoice 
with them that do rejoice, and to weep with them that 
weep, thinking the same things for each other (that is, the 
same for others that you do for yourself), not thinking high 
things, but being carried along (This is very expressive. 
Taking things as they come. Not what your heart findeth to 
do ; not what your wit findeth to do ; but " what your hand 
findeth to do," as Solomon says), carried along by lowly- 
things;"— and then follows the imperative, " be not thought- 
ful just for yourselves." 

Compare now any of our English. '■''Be not wise in your own 
conceits'' (E. V. & Re.). What is that to the purpose? "^^ 
of the same mind one toward another'' (E. V. & Re.). When ? 
and how? '■^Condescends etc." (E.Y.). Why say, ^' to men/' 
and thus alter the gender in the compass of averse? The 
Revisers correct that much. How sad that the way toward a 
more thorough revision should again be sealed up, and that 
Paul's sweetest conceptions, like those in the ninth chapter, 
should fall again asleep, without any possibility of their charm 
being laid bare for another century. 

We have already noticed the being " wise in (our) own con- 
ceit." Chapter eleventh (v. 25) is where it translates (LXX.) 
being ''wise by (our) own eyes" (Prov. 26: 12). The prepo- 
sition is Trapd, and means before ^ as before a judge (see Jelf). 



CHAPTER XII. 333 

*-'■ Thoughtful before (ourselves)" means too exclusively //^^/<t^y^/- 
ful by our own eyes, that is, in ways as we look at it. ^^Be not 
thoughtful just for yourselves.'' That is, give not yourselves up 
to those views of things which your selfish eyes will take, 
instructed by a lapsed conscience, and looking too closely at 
your own. 

The apostle moves on now to another exordium, with its 
prepositive participles: — 

17. Rendering to no man evil for evil; giving thought 
l3eforehand that honorable things as from you shall fall 
under the view of all men; 18. If possible, as to what 
is of your part, living peaceably with all men; 19. Not 
avenging yourselves, beloved ; on the contrary, give place 
to wrath ; for it is written, Vengeance is mine ; I will 
repay, says the Lord. 

17. "Rendering:'* aT:o6i66vTEq (see 2: 6). It need not mean 
recompensing (E. V.). He, Christ, did not give again (E. V.), 
ox give back (Re.) the book to *' the servant" (Lu. 4: 20), for 
probably "the servant" had not given it to Him. "Things 
honorable " (Re.); the same as " ihiiigs honest " (E. V.) in the 
time of King James. The word has changed. Hence an 
eager idea of Paul has to a large extent gone for nothing. He 
wishes Christians, not only to be correct, but noble. They 
are to adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour (Tit. 2: 10). 
The obsolescence has spoiled other sentences. Peter says, 
** Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles " (i 
Pet. 2: 12); and Paul, — urging it frequently: — " Providing (or 
thinking out beforehand) honest things" (2 Cor. 8: 21); then 
changing to cziiva (venerable), '' whatsoever things are honest " 
(Phil. 4:8); or, changing again to kvaxriiJ-6vu^ {handso7nely), '' Let 
us walk honestly" (13: 13). It is a pity under this ancient 
English to cloak all these fine texts, and especially that sen- 
tence of our Saviour " Let your light so shine before men that 
they may see your good works" (E. V. The word is Kald, 
beautiful. It may not be too late to change this in many parts 
of the Bible); "that they may see your handsome acts, and 
glorify your Father which is in Heaven" (Matt. 5: 16). "As 



334 ROMANS. 

to what is on your side." You cannot regulate the other 
party. The Revisers still say, " as much as lieth in you " (E. V.). 
We wonder at that, for it is a tautology. Paul had already 
said, " If (it be) possible." 19. " Not avenging yourselves, 
beloved." One of the forlornest mistakes in any doctrinal 
ethics has grown up under this passage. It has been imagined 
that God may avenge^ but not we. There has eventuated, 
therefore, the idea of a Vindicatory Justice, which is a primor- 
dial attribute of the Almighty. How sad the consequence ! 
The Aztec, blackening his God, and smearing His semblance 
on the earth with the filth of his sacrifices, is not so blas- 
phemous as the Christian, when, with his enlightened creed, 
he attributes revenge to the Most High. The difficulty is not 
hard to deal with. There are but two virtues. The Bible is 
constantly ready for that (Matt. 22 : 40) ; and speaking of one of 
them it says, " Which thing is true in Him and in you " (i Jo. 
2: 8). There are but two things, accordingly, that are right 
either in God or man. Unless "vengeance," therefore, is a 
primordial trait in man, it cannot possibly be in the instance 
of the Almighty. God and man are alike in the originals of 
virtue. And if the two sole righteousnesses are love to the 
welfare of others, and love to God, or, in God's instance, love 
to that which makes Him loveable, viz., the principle of holi- 
ness, where can there be anything primordial outside ? 

To understand our passage, accordingly, we must distin- 
guish. " Vengeance " has two meanings. It is like the word 
machinatio7is^ which may begin as of what is innocent, but may 
end as of what is bad and bitter. " Vengeance " has a noble 
meaning {vindicare)^ and, what is more to our point, kKdiKsu, 
which is what we are directly to account for, means to set 
right or to arrange justly. '' Vengeance " in its bad sense we 
are not to consider. Or rather, as '■'• vengeance'' m. its bad 
sense is a perversion of the other, Paul, in this whole passage, 
is giving directions about hn6LK7]OL^ as a dangerous and difficult 
work on the part of men. 

In the first place, there is to be weeded out of it everything 
like revenge: — 



CHAPTER XII. 335 

20. On the contrary, if thine enemy hunger, feed him ; 
if he thirst, give him drink— 

We can illustrate revenge here with absolute clearness. 

Man has but two duties, (i) to love the welfare of his fel- 
lows, and (2) to love the principle of holiness. Now, as resent- 
ment can flow from neither, resentment is positively forbidden: 
and as these two duties have no exceptions whatever, it follows 
that benevolence must go right on, oblivious of human injuries. 
To say. Undoubtedly, except with the Almighty, is horrible ! 
There is but one virtuousness. And God Himself has taught 
us that there is but one ; for He says, enjoining benevolence, 
*•*■ That ye may be the children of your Father which is in 
heaven; for He makes His sun to shine on the evil and on 
the good, and sends rain upon the just and upon the unjust" 
(Matt. 5:45). 

Now a second point will bring out all the meaning of the 
passage. 'E/cJi/c^ffic, which excludes all idea of resentment, is the 
necessary upholding and enforcing of eternal law. It is really 
the fruit of the two great emotions of righteousness, and not 
itself a co-ordinate desire. Paul's sentiment is, that we are to 
leave it to the administration of Heaven. " Avenging (our- 
selves) " has two difficulties ; first, it favors resentment ; and, 
second, it traverses in many cases God's forms of estab- 
lished vindication (see next chapter). " On the contrary {aXka\ 
give place to wrath." We are to notice at last a real imper- 
ative leaning back upon its host of participles. Paul is will- 
ing to imagine that there will needs be anger, for he has said 
so in the epistle to the Ephesians (4 : 26), — ** Be ye angry and 
sin not." But he commands us carefully to ^^ give place to " it, 
and means that we are to stand still, and let the wrath hurtle 
by. " Give place to'' God's anger some have preferred to say 
(Alford, in loc.)\ and thereby a very innocent interpretation has 
arisen. ^^ Give place to '' the enemy's anger some have imag- 
ined (Ewald). It makes little difference. But the recurrence 
of the word bpyi] in the next chapter (v. 5) ; and the caution 
that they " must needs be subject, not for the anger only " but 
" for conscience sake,'' and the objection that the one meaning 



336 ROMANS. 

is a little too fierce, and the other a little too yielding, carries 
us back to the first explication : — " Not avenging your selves y 
beloved ; on the contrary ^ give place to {your own) wrath y " and 
he means by that, Neglect it, and let it storm on ; " for it is 
written, Vengeance is mine ; I will repay, says the Lord..'* 
Not that we ourselves are not sometimes to " repay^'' but that 
we are to do it as God does it, without the wickedness of 
revenge, and, moreover, as God orders it, which we are about to 
explain in another chapter (13). 

20. Before we reach that, however, we have an interesting 
disclosure. Paul had quoted from the Proverbs. The ideas are 
very simple. We are to have nothing to do with resentment, 
but are to love our enemies, and are not to punish except as an 
ordinance of the Most High (see next chapter). But while the 
thought is plain enough, the Scriptural authority is very remark- 
able. Solomon had simply said, " If he who hates thee hunger^ 
give him food to eat ; if he thirst, give him water to drink ; for^ 
shovelling live coals thyself upon his head, Jehovah shall punish 
thee also" (Prov. 25 : 21, 22). The Seventy altered this. It 
is singular that Paul should have copied their alteration ; and 
most singular of all, that this copying on the part of Paul 
should have regulated our translators (E. V., Prov.), and that 
they should have copied the Septuagint for the Old Testament 
instead of the original Hebrew. Quoting from the Septuagint 
is not an uncommon inspiration (11 : 26, 27 ; i Pet. 4 : 18) ; 
and where the Greek was proverbial, it might be useful in its 
effect. In this passage, however, Solomon has the best sense. 
'* {Heaping) coals of fire'' (E. V.) has always been an ungainly 
figure ; and the fierceness of that imagery everywhere else 
being found to apply to punishment (Ps. 120 : 40 ; 140 : 
10), it ought in our English Old Testament to be kept to that 
sense, and we hope will be found in that way in the coming 
Revision.* 

For divine reasons no doubt, Paul, however, stands as he 
has been written (E. V. & Re.). 

* We since see that it is not. ' 



CHAPTER XIII. 337 

20.— For so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his 
head. 

And this cast of the Greek makes necessary a little more 
careful exposition. Do not you punish, but leave it to the 
Most High. If you keep sedulously away from being resent- 
ful, God is the avenger of all such, and pours the coals of vin- 
dication upon the real offender. Let not that be what you 
pray for, but take courage from the fact. In one catholic sen- 
tence afterward (v. 2i),he gathers up a single maxim. Let evil 
never assert the mastery. When provoked, let not that drive 
you to the additional mischief of malignity. And inasmuch as 
" (giving) place to wrath " is a noble exercise, count that your 
wealth. The sentence is to be universal. '' Overcome evil 
with good'' {Y.. V.) is too much the old thought that we are 
to love our enemies. And " Be not overcome of evil " (E. V.) 
looks too much in that connection like mere meekness : 
whereas it is a direction of the apostle under all calamity. 
Don't succumb to calamity, but conquer it. Don't conquer it 
by curing it and trampling it under foot, but by placing it 
under tribute. And don't levy upon it a mere transitory gain, 
but a thorough transformation into blessing. Notice all the 
particles : — 

21. Be not defeated under the evil ; but defeat the evil in 
the good. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

1. Let every soul be arranged under authorities that hold 
the higher place- 
Here begins the denouement of the true EKdUvaic. We are 
never to punish out of resentment ; and as the motive is, to be 
useful, Paul brings us to the salutary idea of not taking the 
law into our own hands. The translation should be precise ; 
for it avoids that horrible night-mare of " the divine right of 
kings." If he proceeded to say, " Let every soul be subject to 
^ higher powers " (E. V. & Re.), it would drive us to the ne- 



338 ROMANS. 

cessity of qualifying and claiming the reserve, viz., " in case an 
execrable sovereign cannot be thrown off." But by the Greek 
as it is, we are carried to the exact wisdom in the matter. Paul 
is giving the very kernel of the idea of government. We are 
not to avenge ourselves^ which would turn the earth into a 
Bedlam, but we are to let anger sweep on by employing the 
avengement of Heaven, and by doing that, not simply in 
waiting for a vindicating stroke, but by arranging "authori- 
ties" which can hold of the Almighty. 

1.— For there is no authority except under God ; but 
those that exist have been arranged under God. 

" Ordained'' (E. V. & Re.) is too strong a word, and "^/" 
(E. V. & Re.) is not the connecting particle. Nero was 
^^ ordained'' of God; and so was Christ ^''ordained" to be 
crucified ; but God's grandest saint would have been grander 
if he could have hurled Nero to the ground. Paul did not 
mean '^ordained." But, in a way that we can hardly improve 
by comment, he meant just what he has written. Men are 
not to be avenged piece-meal, but are to be "arranged" into 
governments. And then the theory is to be, that each is to 
be avenged by men above him, and by an '■''arranged" author- 
ity. 

2. So that he who arranges himself against the authority, 
is set against the arrangement of God; but they so set shall 
receive to themselves condemnation. 

3. And yet, for the first time, if we attend now to the exact 
expression, we encounter a sentence which needs must have a 
limit: — 

3. For governors are not a terror to the good work, but 
to the evil. 

That, alas ! is far from being true ! So that the earlier part 
of the passage must now be called in, and must apply a neces- 
sary reserve. Men must arrange governments. Paul is urging 
that there be no taint of resentment, and no adversity to 
enemies except the needful hMViKtiaLq. He insists that we leave: 
that to Heaven, and, where man must interfere, to authorized, 



CHAPTER XIII. 339 

government. He accents that by the expression, "every 
soul." Not a mortal must escape. There must be " authority " 
with an Argus eye. Paul has a right to be understood as 
making men responsible for the choice of that ''^authority'' 
And when it has been so chosen as to make it reverential to 
suppose that it is " under God," or when, as the best that 
can be had, it holds the place that can be held by no other, 
men must submit. 

3.— But dost thou wish not to have terror of the author- 
ity? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise 
of the same ; 4. For it is a servant of God to thee for 
good. But if thou doest the evil, have the terror, for it 
bears not the sword in vain. For it is a servant of God, 
an avenger, in matters of anger, upon him who does the 
evil. 

4. Paul means by "anger" (v. 4) our "anger"; to which 
we were to ^^ give place'' (12: 19). We are to ^^ arrange'' to 
have it satisfied in a governmental way. 

5. Wherefore this arrangement under others is neces- 
sary, not for the wrath's sake only, but also for the 
conscience sake. 

We have almost a completed picture, (i) No ^^ wrath" 
in the shape of any resentment (vs. 17-20). (2) No wrath 
sporadically indulged ipso Judice, each man for himself. (3) 
No wrath, ordinarily speaking, except under the arrangements 
of government. (4) No " wrath " under government, however 
prudently ''arranged," out of "wrath" itself "only," how- 
ever innocent, but "also" and chiefly out of " conscience" 
toward God. 

6. Paul deftly supplies, obiter, a thought on the vexed ques- 
tion of "tribute" (Matt. 22: 17). Men are to pay it to the 
Almighty: — 

6. For for this cause ye pay tribute also ; for they are 
executors of God's service, pressing earnestly forward as 
to this very thing. 

7. Like the treatise on revenge {12: 17, etc.), and the treatise 
on government (13: i, etc.), both of which are first-class, we are 



340 ROMANS. 

to have from this verse to the tenth, a still more profound 
account of the whole nature of morality: — 

7. Give to all what is owing ; tribute to whom tribute ; 
custom to whom custom. ; fear to whom fear ; honor to 
whom honor. 8. Owe nothing to anybody save love to 
one another ; for he who loves the other has fulfilled the 
law. 

"Owing." We render this with a part of the verb to 
^"^ owe'' to keep up the connection. If we say " due " (E. V. & 
Re.), we are in danger of hiding it (see next verse). The 
apostle has already represented that in paying tribute to man 
we are really paying tribute to the Almighty (v. 6). He now 
goes deeper, and makes clear the very germ of ethical obliga- 
tion. He says, " G-ive to all what is owing," numbering 
a whole list of claims: and then winds up with the doctrine 
that we are not to '' owe " anything (alas ! alas ! for the silli- 
ness that would make this mean that men are not to " owe '•* 
debts !). It is the force of the Eastern imperative. It means 
that we do not '^ owe'' anything. It is a grand affirmation of 
morals that a man cannot ''^ owe" anything but '*love" the 
one " to another." The Greek iiri^kv forbids btpeilere to be read 
as an indicative; but an imperative is the strongest sort of an 
indicative. When the text says, " Make the heart of this people 
fat" (Is. 6: lo), as English it is infamous, but as Hebrew it is a 
tenfold indicative. Paul simply means, You do not " owe " any- 
body anything but love. And the belief that the capital of 
the world must lie dead, and no man must borrow it, and so 
'■^ owe" anything to anybody ; that a child must ^^ owe" noth- 
ing to his father, or an apprentice to his master, or a State to 
its inhabitants, is silly beyond imagination. We smirch the 
Bible by such things. Paul immediately explains: — 

9. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt 
not kill, Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet, and 
if there be any other commandment, it is summed up in 
this word, namely. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy- 
self. 

To give his reasons, let us regard the clear sweep of the 



CHAPTER XIII. 341 

passage. It is not the whole law (but, really, if a man keeps 
one table, he will keep the other), but it is the whole essence 
of mutual obligation. Other Scriptures have repeated it (i 
Cor. 13: I, etc.; Col. 3: 14). Truth and honor and chastity, 
and respect for friends, and regard for enemies, intolerance 
for sin, and tolerance under wrong and harm, are summarily 
comprehended in this, as Christ long ago said (Matt. 22: 40), 
" Thou Shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 

But Paul digs down deeper, for he gives this philosophic 
reason: — 

10. Love works no ill to the neighbor ; therefore love 
is a fulfilling of law. 

Nor can we {>arry this. It will not do to say, One excellent 
trait may imply the others, but need not claim that it iiicludes 
them; a saint utterly honest will be utterly chaste ; and Paul 
may be right in saying that a man who loves cannot lie, and 
that a man who has benevolent affection will not be a miner 
of families or a public scandal.. The case must be stronger ; 
not what love implies, but what it includes. Paul means to say, 
that duty is made up of love ; not solely that love and sin are 
inconsistent with each other, but that sin is just that thing, a 
simply not-loving, and that the second table of our duties, as he 
intimates here (v. 9) and elsewhere (Gal. 5: 14), is "summed 
up " as one, by benevolent regard. 

11. And this, knowing the occasion, that now it is high 
time for you to awake out of sleep ; for now is ouj salva- 
tion nearer than when we believed. 

"And this; " referring to all the summing up of their duty 
(Chaps. 12, 13). "High time" (E. V. &Re.); simply l^pa, the 
hour. " To awake. " Paul calls life " night " (v. 12), and im- 
peaches men of a mad tendency to " sleep." " Salvation." 
This is an old habit of the Bible, to call conversion ^^salva- 
tion'' (10: 10), but to baptize with the name afresh when we 
are thoroughly converted on the day of judgment. We were 
" redeemed " nineteen centuries ago (i Pet. i: 18); we were 
'' redeemed " again a few years ago when we were brought into 



342 ROMANS. 

the Kingdom (Col. i: 14); but we are "redeemed," by a third 
use of the word, at that unknown date which we are to esteem 
above all others as "the day of redemption " (Eph. 4: 30). 

12. The night has gone forward, but the day has drawn 
near— 

The expressions are moderate. It does not say ^^ far spent'' 
(E. V. & Re.), for that might leave out the young. It does 
not say, " The day is at hand'' {E.Y. & Re.). Paul draws 
attention to the fact that "the night" is flying by, and "the 
day *' nearer. It is well to notice the language ; there has 
been an obstinate opinion that Paul thought that the day of 
the Lord was at hand. Such misconceivings of the fact 
destroy the idea of inspiration. Moreover Paul corrected this 
very conceit (2 Thess. 2 : 2). Paul's eschatology was cer- 
tainly very simple : — First, that the parousia was the Judg- 
ment (i Thess. 4 : 15) ; second, that men were not alive 
between death and the Judgment Day (i Cor. 15 : 17-19, 32, 
54; Heb. II : 39, 40) ; third, that all that was awful was 
delayed when we left the world, by a dreamless slumber (Heb. 
9 : 27) ; and yet, fourthly, that death and judgment come 
together ; that is, that they come together in the dead man's 
consciousness ; the interval between being lost as being only 
.a dreamless nothingness. 

To build, therefore, upon the Greek a mistake in Paul as to 
one thing, is simply to imagine the possibilities of misappre- 
hension any where ; and to build, upon anything in Paul, a mil- 
lennial idea, and, above all, a pre-millennial advent, is to make ' 
light of Scripture generally ; for the Scriptures are every- 
where warning us of the suddenness of the coming Judge 
(Matt. 24 : 36-44,50, 51), and this would be putting between, 
no end of intervening history (see com. 11 : 25). 

" The night has gone forward, but the day has drawn 
near." That suits no other idea than that of this passing life. 
" The night has gone forward ;" that is ^'- the night" of the 
earthly trial of the clouded and darkened believer. " The day 
has drawn near ;" that is " M^ day" oi dying, when, like a 
telegram under the sea, heaven will seem to come at once. 



CHAPTER XIII. 343 

"// is high time fo awake," heca.use ^'■salvation,'' for the first 
time worthy of the name, will break upon us instantly, as far 
as we shall consciously know, and that bright hour comes 
each instant nearer since the day that we believed. 

A noble book might be written on the one subject of spirit- 
ual "light." Solomon calls it ^^ wisdom'' (Prov. i : 2). Our 
Saviour often speaks of it as '''knowledge'' (Jo. 17 : 3). It is 
often c2^\Qd'' understanding" (Prov. 16 : 16 ; Is. 6 : 10). It 
is really nothing more than conscience. When a man's con- 
science is enlightened, which is the only change at the moment 
of the new-birth, that is really the new born condition of holi- 
ness, or piety, or godliness, or righteousness, or moral appre- 
ciation and benevolent regard, just whatever we choose to 
call it. '•'• Love" (2 Thess. 2 : 10), in the sense of esteem, is 
but the enlightened discernment of the sweetness of the 
truth, or, if we would speak less abstractly, of the sweetness 
of the moral object which the man is looking at. Grace, after 
that, is a progress. Give a man light, and the love, of the 
First Table, is not even a sequence. It is the appreciative 
regard itself. Faith is the same thing, with certain elements 
of confidence turned upon a revealed Helper. Repentance is 
the same light, turned upon sin, instead of upon holiness. 
Nothing is more needed just at present than to simplify piety 
by calling it *' light." The sinner passes from " darkness " to 
''■light" (Acts 26: 18); and to say, No, light follows after- 
ward ; or, A man must have faith first, and that will bring 
moral appreciation, is the curse of the Reformed. Conversion 
is '^ light" in answer to prayer, and that, in its very dawn, is a 
moral " light." That explains its being the fruit of a regen- 
erating work. To say, as our Protestants do. Faith first, and 
moral illumination afterward, is to turn it all backward. 
Regeneration, as all Protestants agree, is a moral metamorpho- 
sis of the lost. Regeneration, as is equally agreed, brings forth 
faith. Faith then, it can only be madly added, must prelude 
and effect a moral change. And yet this is the vagary of the 
creeds ! And it is the bane of orthodoxy. The ample doc- 
trine of the word is that what a man must first aim after is 



344 ROMANS. 

"■^ lights He must get it at the cross of the Redeemer. The 
influx of ^^ light'' is regeneration, and realizes every grace. 
The sun shines upon the earth, and breeds all daylight colors. 
And so "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God" 
shines upon work, and breeds diligence ; shines upon sin, and 
comes up repentance ; shines upon the lost, and takes the form 
of compassion ; shines upon God, and in the very vision of 
Him is the very substance of our love ; shines upon Christ, 
and draws to it all the elements of confidence ; so that there 
is truer speech in saying that faith is the effect of holiness, than 
that holiness is the effect of faith, though both are mistaken 
rhetoric. Long before a man has any holiness, he has a cer- 
tain sort of faith, and there is really the secret of the error. 
The faith that my mother taught me has brought me to the 
mercy-seat, and, in that far off unsaving way, is saving ; but 
what all Protestants call " saving faith " is nothing of the kind. 
It is the in-breaking of the actual " light ; " and that " light'' is 
not only moral, as one incident of its sort, but it is in a grand 
sense morality itself. It is the waking of the moral sense that 
constitutes regeneration, and is the saving change in the faith 
of the redeemed. 

12.— Let us, therefore, put off the works of darkness,— 

Notice the language. It is the genitive of material. The 
very " works " are " darkness."* Just as all virtues trace 
to ^^ light," because, as these texts inform us, they really are 
'^ love" (13 : 10), so all wickedness consists in darkness. If 
all trespass is by a deficiency of ^^ love" (13 : 9; i Cor. 13), 
and all love is but an excellence of vision (i Jo. 3 : 2), all 

* ^cr/^j- convey different notions, according to our mood. " Works'' 
morally, or as deserving of reward, are love. It is .the love in them that 
makes them moral, or the want of love that makes them wicked. And in 
this view " works 0/ darkness" are darkness as the only thing productive of 
guilt. But " works'' physical, or the mechanic performances of the sinner, 
viewed externally, are the fruif of "darkness," here the genitive being th6 
genitive of efficiency and not of material, just as we say " works of the law" 
meaning such works as the law by promises or threat (without the Spirit) 
might occasion or engender (see com, 3 : 20). 



CHAPTER XIII. 345 

sin is " darkness'' and those become most singularly intended 
texts which speak of the '' power of darkness " (Col. i : 13), 
and which speak of chained spirits, not incarcerated by walls, 
but " under darkness "(Jude 6), and, in another place, as hav- 
ing " chains of darkness " (2 Pet. 2 : 4), showing that eternal 
confinement in the Pit is effectuated by being blind (Is. 42 : 
7), that being the head condition of a state of wickedness. 

Now Paul condenses another thought into the remaining 
syllables (v. 12); "Let us, therefore, put off the works of 
darkness;" and we might naturally suppose he would add, 
"Let us put on the (works) of light.*' But that does not 
suit him. In the epistle to the Ephesians he enlarges the on- 
coming idea. He imagines the Christian in battle. He says, 
*' We wrestle not against flesh and blood " (Eph. 6: 12). What 
would make pretty poor " works,'' he sees will make very toler- 
able " weapons." And therefore he enlarges in the Ephes- 
ians what he merely glances at here, ^^Let us put off the works 
of darkness,'' — 

12.— And let us put on the weapons of light. 

As though he had said, ^^ Works," of course; but they look 
to me much more like " weapons." When I have called grace 
by its very highest name, and gone back to the very " light " 
of God for its origin and character, it seems almost a burlesque 
upon the word to say works of light. But what are too mean 
for the name, in half-hearted believers in the cross, make dan- 
gerous weapons. Satan flies at '' the light" that is in the mean- 
est Christian. At any rate, these are our meagre ^^ weapons." 
And Paul, in his speech to Ephesus, makes the most of them. 
He says, *^ Having done all (we are to) stand." And he cata- 
logues our " armor " in a way to bring out masterfully that 
they are " weapons of light." In the first place, we have "the 
girdle of truth;" that means inner " truth," the appreciated 
realities that are moral (Eph. 4: 24; '' holiness of truth," E. V., 
marg.); that "truth" which God is said to be (i Jo. 5: 6); 
and it is properly a " girdle," because it holds all the rest, and 
binds them all together when they hang upon the wall. Next 



346 ROMANS. 

we have the " breast-plate," which is a man's personal *' right- 
eousness," which, though a rent and cut corselet, is neverthe- 
less the best he has, and, strange enough, grows sounder and 
stronger as he fights in it. Next, we have the sandals, which, 
to take the Greek literally, are " the readiness of the peaceful 
gospel." "Over all" {tixi), or, if we yield to anew reading 
iiv), " along with all," that is, to cover all our own infirmi- 
ties, " taking the shield of faith ; " and then, as the emblem 
of " hope" (i Thess. 5 : 8), ''the helmet," and then, as the 
instrument of grace, "the word." It is interesting to see how 
all are " weapons of lights' and how " the whole armor " is 
gauged by " the light " that grows in the believer. They all 
hang upon "the girdle of truth " (Matt. 22: 40). 
13. Let us walk nobly as though by day;— 

Two of Paul's recent ideas (12:17; 13: 12) are here wedded 
into one. Not only are we to " walk nobly," in contrast 
with that mere honestness (E. V. & Re.) which the Revisers 
ought certainly to have weeded out, but we are to think of it 
as the creature of " the lights What cannot the lost be if '•''the 
day " breaks ? And those night-birds, where will they be when 
'''the light'' arises? "Let us walk handsomely {evaxw^vuc) 
as though by day,"— 

13.— Not in revelling and drunkenness, not in cham- 
bering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. 14. 
But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and for desires of 
the flesh make ye no provision. 

** Put ye on." The idea of armor comes back, but it is now 
broadened. Things are ''put on " for either of four purposes^ 
to cover our nakedness, or to warm our bodies, or to defend 
our lives, or to ornament our persons. Accordingly, "Put ye 
on the Lord Jesus Christ." To hide our nakedness we must 
have His pardons. To warm our dead life we must have His 
Spirit. To fight our fight we must have Him in us and by us. 
And to "walk handsomely as though by day'' we must "/z^/ 
(Him) on " as cur whole model and strength. For if we live, 
no such living as that is by anything that we can live, but by 
Christ that liveth in us. And the life that we now live in the 



CHAPTER XIII. 347 

flesh, must be by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and 
gave Himself for us (Gal. 2: 20). Then follows the close. If 
we are to live handsomely, we are to put Christ before us in 
many ways, "Make no provision." This is like many Scrip- 
tures. "God sent me not to baptize " (i Cor. i: 17); that is, 
not by contrast or in any conceivable comparison. " Take no 
thought for your life " (Matt. 6: 25); that is, by contrast, or as 
a first consideration. "Ye had not had sin" (Jo. 15: 22); 
that is, no sin worthy, after that, of any but half regard. In 
the present instance, the intention is more direct. " Make no 
provision'' On the contrary, cast your life in an entirely dif- 
ferent way. He is a happy mortal who no longer says, I will 
^^ make'' this or that ^'•provision" for my daily necessities; but, 
From this time forward I positively refuse. Hereafter, I work 
for God. And as I cannot bless Him in any immediate way, 
my trade is, — to be useful. Hereby I drive from me every 
different act or care. And as, to serve my Maker, I must 
serve His creatures, and as, to serve His creatures, I must 
maintain myself, and as, to maintain myself, I must pursue 
my business, I will throw all into that shape, anticipating my 
heavenly life, where I shall serve perpetually my fellows, and 
find thereby the highest welfare to my being. 

Tipovoiav " for desires of the flesh.," seems a better arrange- 
ment of the Greek than rrpdvomv ^^ for the flesh " (gen.), in respect 
to {e'lq) desires.''. But the difference hardly matters. 

^^ Desires." Desires that are altogether innocent may 
become desires altogether guilty when they are the only 
desires we have : because they are the exercises of the 
human soul that act out and, each time, increase our want of 
better affections. " Flesh ; " all of a man that is not spiritual. 
The whole of a creature outside of his conscience is " the 
flesh " in the meaning of the apostle. " He that sows to his 
flesh," constitutional and unliable to blame as *' the flesh " may 
be, of these constitutional tastes " reaps corruption : " not 
that they themselves may be corrupt, but sowing to them 
betokens the guilt implied in the want of the pneuma or mora! 



348 ROMANS. 

^^ desires y This closes a lengthened exhortation beginning 
with the twelfth chapter, 

CHAPTER XIV. 

The twelfth chapter declared that a man must " think 
soberly " (v. 3) ; that, as far as he allowed himself to judge of 
his ministry, he must make an estimate of it " according to (its) 
proportion of faith'' ^'' Faith,'' too, must be judged by its 
" service " (v. 7). And " service," in a most interesting way, is 
accounted that which can be accredited only as it serves. 
Teaching can be of faith only as it teaches, and exhortation 
only as it exhorts. Giving must be weighed only by its sim- 
plicity ; ruling, by its diligence ; the mercy-shewer, by his 
cheerfulness. So Paul starts his consideration of character. 
He spends two chapters upon ''faith," ennobling it as hand- 
some " in behavior (v. 17), and limiting it down to an affection of 
the heart (13: 8). He begins now another /(^j^Vz^/z/j- with the 
word "but." Do all these things to strengthen your own 
*' faith," but, all the more, be tolerant and kind to those who 
are " weak " believers : — 

1. But him who is weak in the faith accept, nor that, 
either, to become judges of his opinions. 

Notice the strange cunning of the apostolic procedure. He 
is willmg to suppose everything. His argument is painstak- 
ingly ad hominem. He arrays himself on the side of the less 
scrupulous (v. 2), and is willing to suppose that the scruples 
he is to consider sprang from weakness of faith. Or he will 
yield to the theory that it is ""weak" in another sense, viz., 
ignorant, or simply silly. He pitches his recourse high up in 
the region of the gospel. His first consideration is that man 
must "accept," because "God has accepted." The pre- 
supposition is that the man has ''faith j" now if it be the 
silliest sort of "faith," so that it boggles about "herbs" and 
slain meat, no matter ; if the man has "faith," it is a sign that 
he has been with the Redeemer. 

2. One man has faith to eat everything. Another, a weak 
one, eats herbs. 



CHAPTER XIV. 349 

Paul decides that he is not only to be " accepted,'' but accepted 
not for the purpose of criticising his opinions (v. i). 

3. Let not him who eats despise him who does not eat ; 
and, on the other hand, let not him who does not eat judge 
him who eats, for God has accepted him. 

^'Received'' (E. V. & Re.) is not quite cordial enough. The 
word is TzpoG?uiul3dvcj, literally to take close to one [accipio, to ^' ac- 
cept"). Let it be noticed that ^^ doubtf id disputations''' (v. i, E. 
V. & Re.) are quite wide of the mark of (^laKplceig dtaTio-yiafiuv. 

Paul proceeds now with a number of considerations which 
we will mention in their order. First : — 

4. Who art thou who judgest another man's servant ?— 

Paul would be far from the thought that we are not to 
judge. On the contrary, he would agree with John that 
for certain Sialoyiafioi we were to wash our hands of a man. 
Mere tolerance is one of the last ideas of the Bible. " He 
that abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, receive him not into 
your house, neither bid him God-speed " (2 Jo. 9, 10). But 
Paul is tired of scruples. What he wants is the eternal dis- 
tinction between what is first and what is second. He has 
already described ^^ faith," and shown that it is to be the ele- 
ment in all our measurements. " In preaching " it is to be the 
element ^^ in {omx) preaching" (12: 6). We are not to ask 
what mistakes he made, or what want of Demosthenean power, 
but what ''^ faith " had he. And that is to be asked in all our 
services. And so when he comes down to the " weak,'' it is 
not the question how " weak," or what mistakes does he make 
in minor principles or acts, but we are to accredit the great 
liberty of thought, and leave his blunders to the care of the 
Almighty. 
4.— To his own master he stands or falls ;— 
And yet Paul does not even leave him to his Master. He 
follows him further. Granting the great principle of ^' faith," 
his blunders are not to ruin him. " The Lord is able to make 
him stand;" and '■'■ able," not simply in the commoner sense, 
but in the sense of a previous passage (9 : 22), that is, in con- 



350 ROMANS. 

sistency with the whole gospel (i6 : 25). The poorest sim- 
pleton, if he have '■^ faith,'' must be " accepted'' by the church, 
'^ for God has accepted him. "Who art thou that judgest 
another man's servant ? " Not only to his own master does 
he stand or fall, 

4.— But he shall be made to stand ; for the Lord is able to 
make him stand. 

As a second consideration, along with another picture, Paul 
brings out the principle that though a man may be excused for 
the weakness of his opinions, yet that he should have a care in 
forming his opinions, and that this care should be commensu- 
rate with his devotion to God. 

5 . One man esteems one day above another ; another es- 
teems every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded 
in his own mind. 

Thirdly, opinions thus formed, though wrong, evince a bet- 
ter spirit than mere correctness of opinion. This is a prime 
part of the apostle's reasoning : — 

6. He who regards the day regards it to the Lord ;— 
Suppose a man were singularly apt in forming his opin- 
ions ; or suppose a man were singularly true in carrying them 
out, which would be the higher character ? This is a fine 
stroke. See how piously the man acts even in his delusion : — 

6.— And he that eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God 
thanks ; and he that eats not, to the Lord he eats not, 
and gives God thanks. 

Paul would plainly imply that it is better to be an earnest 
worshiper even under some secondary mistake, than at all in 
the least degree less earnest in a perfect ritual. 

7. For he goes on to say, and this is a fourth point, "No 
one lives to himself." Not only is it a high excellence in a 
man to be devoted even under some mistakes, but Paul brings 
it into view that it is the whole of piety. Forming a shrewd 
opinion is wise, but carrying it out is heavenly: — 

7. For no man lives to himself, and no man dies to 
himself. 8. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord, 



CHAPTER XIV. 351 

and whether we die, we die unto the Lord ; whether we 
live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. 

Abraham knew little of Christ, but Abraham was earnest. 
Peter had grossly wrong opinions (Matt. 16: 23), and about 
much more serious matters than eating herbs. Exquisite 
Christians are lunatics about half the faith. 

But Paul, with wonderful condensation, brings out a fifth 
point. Not only is living to God the great end of the believer, 
and, therefore, of unspeakable importance above the secondary 
half of his creed, but to help him to do so was the great end 
of the Redeemer. 

9. For to this very end Christ died and lived, that He 
might become Lord of both dead and living. 

10. Sixth, Paul shames the Christian, because he himself is 
to be the victim of the most scathing judgment. 

10. But thou, why dost thou judge thy brother? Or 
especially thou, why dost thou despise thy brother ? For 
we are all to stand before the judgment seat of Christ. 11. 
For it is written: 

As I live, says the Lord, to me every knee shall bow. 
And every tongue shall confess to God. 

Why judge a " brother " about trifles, when we ourselves 
are to be humiliated at the last about much graver wicked- 
nesses ? 

12. So then, each one of us is to give account of himself 
to God. 

This grandest apostle is the albatross of the Scripture dia- 
lectic. His wing is ceaseless. We dash without a break into 
his seventh appeal. Beware of your own personal act ! Eating 
and drinking is a trifle, but violating conscience is a terrible 
iniquity. Mark how he builds deep and solid. " I know and 
am persuaded." Eating may be in doubt, but the fact I now 
mention is beyond a cavil. ^^I knmv and am persuaded^'' and, 
therefore, I of all others might cheer you on in laughing at 
these simpleton believers. It may be foolish to scruple, but it 
is infinitely more foolish not to hesitate. '■^ I know and am per- 



352 ROMANS. 

suaded that there is nothing unclean of itself, but (and 
here is a principle that sweeps over six verses, 13-18) to him 
who thinks anything unclean, to him it is unclean." Paul 

seizes deftly all the threads of thought. Not only are you 
tempting another, but you are sinning awfully yourself: — 

13. Let us, therefore, no more judge each other, but da 
ye judge this rather, not to place a stumbling block or a 
trap in a brother's way. 14. I know and am persuaded in 
the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself; but 
to him who thinks anything unclean, to him it is unclean. 
15. For if thy brother is grieved on account of meat, thou 
walkest no longer lovingly. 

Paul is edging up closer. Thus far, he has been talking of 
judging. Now he is plunging deeper in his reasoning. Con- 
science is so much nobler than meats that he is about to enjoin 
upon the " strong " that they actually " bear the infirmities of 
the weak'' (15: i). See how he advances his redoubts: — 

15.— Destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ 
died. 

He is actually meddling with my meat ! 

"Become Lord" (v. 9). This corresponds with the eighth 
verse, where Paul gives it as the great end of life to be " the 
Lord's." Of course Christ's great end (man-ward) is to make 
us '"'■the Lord's'' (v. 9). If, as the conceded point. He has 
made the ^'weak brother" His, then " Destroy not him with 
thy meat for whom Christ died." 

Having such weak people in charge, it is strangely necessary 
that we do not injure them. Meats are unimportant, but a 
wounded conscience is a terrible mishap. "Let us, there- 
fore, no longer judge each other, but judge ye this rather, 
not to place a stumbling block or a trap in a brother's way '* 

(v. 13)- 

^^ I know and am persuaded" (v. 14). See how much stronger 
this makes it ! Paul settles the question, for he adds, " in the 
Lord Jesus." And yet, though he knows that the doubters 
are all wrong, and knows that they will wickedly resist this ap- 
peal to inspiration, yet he takes the extreme ground that we 



CHAPTER XIV. 353 

are to go over to them! The passage is a very striking one ; but 
before we inspect it all, let us complete with care some 
other expositions. 

"Unclean" (v. 14, E. V. & Re.), because common (which is 
the real word) meant that in the Jewish habit of speech (Acts 
10: 28). 

"Lovingly." The terms are precise. They mean "■accord- 
ing to love'' Paul aims to be exhaustive. He has said in 
one chapter that we '■'-owe'' nothing but ^' love " (13: 8). Meat 
is a trifle. " Neither if we eat are we the better ; neither if we 
eat not are we the worse" (i Cor. 8: 8). It may cause us 
great personal inconvenience to do without a dish. Moreover 
the troublesome saint is confessedly silly, and Paul, "knows'' it 
that way, and knows it by inspiration, or, in other words, " in 
the Lord Jesus \" and yet as a splendid decision, which has 
lived all these centuries in the church, the weak are to govern 
the strong, and that for grand considerations, which are the 
genuine out-beaming of the Gospel. 

Paul takes the ground that we are to be governed by "love "' 
(13: 9). The very world, we everywhere find, was begotten 
by "love" (Prov. 8: 22-30). We have no obligation to men 
but the obligation of "love" (13: 8, 10). We have a lot of 
weak communicants. Their comfortable conscience is more 
important than our eating meat. To seduce them against 
their principle xi\2>.y " destroy" them forever. That is all of 
it. And there emerges Paul's verdict to Corinth, which 
has been so often quoted, " If meat make my brother to oifend, 
I will eat no flesh while the world standeth " (i Cor. 8: 13). 

We need hardly explain the sentence "for whom Christ 
died" (v. 15). If " Christ died" for a man, surely we can go 
without meat for him ; particularly if there be the slenderest 
danger that we ^empt and " destroy " him. 

16. Paul advances now to the eighth consideration. If a 
man is a Christian, " the good " in him is exceedingly pre- 
cious. He may be a very " weak " Christian, yet if his weakness 
consists in scruples, and his scruples are felt and pressed out 



354 ROMANS. 

of love to the Master, we are to be careful ! Bringing out into 
bold relief his weaknesses will hide his better qualities, and, in 
fact, show scruples in us; for it will show that we are not moved 
by the grander traits, but stick, ourselves, in the small partic- 
ulars. This is plainly the apostle's meaning: — 

16. Let not your good, therefore, be evil spoken of. 

"Your good." Paul had been using before the second 
person singular. He now changes to the plural. " Your good*' 
is now the good of the whole body. Do not speak evil of the 
^^weak," for they are part of you ; and don't reflect upon your- 
selves ; foremen" (v. i8) will side vi'ith Vat '' weak " and 
** approve" the man who longs to do his duty, above the man 
who laughs at him for scruples about food or holidays. 

^^ Accept'' him, the word had been (v, i), and there had imme- 
diately been imposed the caution, " not with criticisms of his 
opinions " (v. i). If he is a Christian (and do not " accept " him 
unless he is), then he loves Christ, and what is butcher's meat 
in contrast with affection ? That is the point which the next 
sentence presses: — 

17. For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but 
righteousness and peace and joy in a Holy Spirit. 

1 8. The very scruples of a man may be warmed by these 
principles of life ; and if they are, "men" will show respect — 
to say nothing of the Almighty. In fact, this is everything that 
can deserve respect. The only question is. Is he a possessor 
of even the feeblest affection ? 

18. For he that in this serves Christ, is acceptable to God 
and approved of men. 

We were strongly tempted to the idea thati/zwv (v. i6) might 
be connected with Q'^aotprjiiEiodu, and might be one of those rare 
cases of a causal genitive (see Goodwin, Gram.); bringing out 
the meaning, ^^Let not the good" (viz., of these weak-minded 
believers) be evil spoken of by you." But though poetry is full 
of such causal constructions, prose is not; and though Paul in 
any one of these aphoristic sentences may be quoting poetry, 



CHAPTER XIV. 355 

yet we could rarely know it ; and unquestionably the other 
connection of the pronoun is the more usual, and has the 
higher right. 

"In this" (v. 1 8) is the more authoritative reading, and is 
a neuter expression, including the whole state of spirit (v. 17). 
"Holy Spirit " (v. 17) is without the article, and to translate it 
so should offend no creed, for all translators sometimes translate 
that way, we mean when the article is missing (Matt. 22: 43, E. 
v., see Re.; Acts 19: 2, E. V., seeRe.; see also Revisers in i 
Cor. 2: 12, and Rev. 11: 11), and do not consider themselves as 
thereby altering the fact that when it is not missing, it may 
express directly a living "Deity" (Acts 13: 2; 2 Cor. 3: 17). 
"The Kingdom of God" (v. 17) is undoubtedly all the uni- 
verse. Our bodies belong to it ; but in the way of eminence 
only our intelligent being. But the apostle goes a vast deal 
further, and borrowing his idea from the Redeemer, means 
" The Kingdom of God (that) is within you " (Lu. 17:21). He 
gives to it, in the way of supreme honor, our moral part. God 
wields immense potency in rolling the stars, but Paul ascribes 
higher power to His moral Kingdom. Conscience is its centre. 
And to restore a conscience, is a higher act than to upbuild 
matter to its very rim. " What the exceeding greatness of His 
power ? " is the problem which is to task eternity ; and Paul 
turns its grandest edge and compass to the thought that it is 
a ''power to us-ward who believe" (Eph. i: 19). 

19. Paul's ninth consideration is, that picking at these lesser 
points destroys the whole enterprise of salvation: — 

19. Let us, therefore, press forward toward the things of 
peace and of edification each for the other. 

"Press forward." The verb is a strong one. "Each for 
the other." This belongs both to the "peace" and to the 
"edification." ^'■Things whereby we may edify one another'' 
(E. V. & Re.) is a translation that does not recognize this. 
The ^^ peace " like the edifying must be pressed-after, " each for 
the other." I must have ^^ peace " with him, and I must see to 
it that he has '^ peace " with me. 



356 ROMANS. 

20. For meat throw not down the work of God.— 

"Throw not down," as opposed to edifying (v. 19). The 
Greek is /caraAi^w, not d7rdAAt;e (v. 15, 'V<?i"/r^_>'," E. v.). And so, 
very naturally, the apostle adds: — 

20.— All things may indeed be clean, but it is an evil 
thing for a man to eat so as to occasion stumbling. 

^'^ Peace'' and upbuilding (v. 19) are higher things than 
eating "meat." The ^'"meaf' may be innocent, but not the 
act of eating it. It cannot be my duty to eat meat, in the sense 
in which it may be my duty to remove a stumbling block. 
" For meat throw not down the work of God. All things 
may indeed be clean, but it is an evil thing for a man to eat 
so as to occasion stumbling." 

21. And then the obverse idea ! — 

21. It is a noble thing not to eat flesh or to drink wine or 
to do anything whereby thy brother stumbles. 

" Or is offended or is made weak " (E. V.) has the authority 
against it (see MSS.), but it is by no means certain that it is 
not a true reading. 

22. It is like Paul to keep his strongest considerations to the 
last. Like Christ, if that story is true of Him (see the MSS.), 
calling upon certain accusers to throw the first stone if they 
are innocent (Jo. 8 : 7), he quietly raises the question, as his 
tenth point, whether these ^''strong'' believers (!) have not pe- 
culiarities of faith which they themselves are not following. 
His mode of intimating this is of the most delicate possible. 
" Happy is the man ! " He is a creature of rare felicity who 
does not often believe one thing and do another. 

22. The faith which thou holdest, hold in accordance 
with thy self before God. 

That is. Thou scornest this stickling in meat, and " holdest " 
a "faith" proudly above this mob of weak believers. But 
have a care ! Thine own very "self;" how does it hold in 
all its deep convictions in the respect of this alleged believing ? 
Art thou always doing that which thine innermost ^'self* 



CHAPTER XIV. 357 

believes that thou oughtest to do, and that, humov rov deov, in 
God's sight, or, what is an equivalent expression, " before 
God" (Lu. I : 6, 15) ? 
I trow not : — 

22.— Happy is he who judges not himself in that which 
he approves. 

23. All unconscientiousness Paul says " is sin." All men 
he seems to suspect are unconscientious. He evidently im- 
plies that it should make us modest in judging. "But " {6e) ; 
and this word answers to Paul's doubting over what he holds ; 
not only are convictions to be hearkened to, *' but " doubts are 
supreme in their place : — 

23. But he that doubts is condemned if he eat, because it 
is not of faith ; and whatsoever is not of faith is sin. 

" The faith which {w) thou boldest " (v. 22). This read- 
ing has all the authority. But whether it has or not ; or 
whether we read interrogatively (E. V.), or in any of the dif- 
ferent ways, makes not the smallest difference. It is well to 
say ''holdesf' {ixm\ and not ''hast " (E. V. & Re.), for " hold- 
est'^x'i more artificial than ''hast,'' and answers better to the 
idea of seeming or supposing oneself to hold. "In accordance 
with thyself." This is the proper force of K^rd. " The Gos- 
pel according to John,'' means the gospel " in accordance with " 
his remembrances of it. " According to himself " or " according 
to itself " in the Bible is translated very wrongfully "alone** 
or " by himself,'* and we hide thereby most important signifi- 
cance. Even Paul (though the other is admissible) might 
have been better said to dwell " according to himself" when 
the others went to jail (Acts 28 : 16), rather than " by himself* 
(E. V. & Re.), Kad eavTov meaning " to himself" or " at his own 
7vill" or " disposal" the limitation being that it was " with a 
soldier that kept him." This criticism, however, becomes 
imminent when the apostle James is looked into. When he 
says, " Is dead according to its very self " (2 : 17), it is ruin to 
translate him, " Is dead being alone " (E. V.). The Revisers 
also damage him by saying (and this with unspeakably less 



358 ROMANS. 

warrant) ** is dead in itself " (Re.). The book is afterward \.o 
say, " And not by faith only'' {ji&vovy v. 24). The apostle is at- 
tempting to argue (what is the very strongest of all assevera- 
tions), that faith, being the most pregnant of all gifts, and being, 
according to that other apostle, the very " substance of things 
hoped for " (Heb. 11 : i); that is, in its needful differentia^ if it 
be saving, being the very light of holiness itself, is *■'■ dead'' if 
it is not holy. And whether ours be saving faith or common, 
its dicta in either case rebuke a counterfeit, so that in either 
case, " if it have not works it is dead according to its very 
self" (Jas. 2 : 17 ; see Excursus ad Jin.). 

The bearing is evident. Paul insists that our faith, if we 
pretend it, shall be " in accordance with " ourselves. We shall 
not believe one way, and behave another. Nay, that our out- 
giving shall fit the body of ourselves. And he makes it all 
more solemn when he says evuwiov rov deov, that is, when he lets 
in upon the question of our obedience, the fact that we are 
under the eye of the Almighty. 

CHAPTER XV. 

Eleventh: — 

1. But we who are able, are bound to bear the weak- 
nesses of those who are unable, and not to please our- 
selves. 

"But" is the appropriate particle. You have scruples of 
your own, but in this question of meat, you are "able " to act 
with freedom. Your brother is " unable." The point is well 
taken. We lose it entirely if we translate " strong " and " weak " 
(E. V. & Re.). The elenchtic triumph depends upon the idea 
of 6vva/j.ai. You may have your own weaknesses and scruples, 
" dut," in this matter, you are " al?le " to make a concession, 
and your weak brother is " unable." That makes all the differ- 
ence. The same adjectives have been noticed elsewhere. We 
hear of '■'•what the law could not do" (8: 3, advvarov)^ because it 
was morally '■'unable." We hear of what God could do (9: 22) 
iox the obverse reason. Paul had pressed the idea that what 



CHAPTER XV. 359 

a man thought, he must follow (14: 14); now, if the sticklers 
at Rome thought that they must live upon herbs, so it must be. 
And he brings out the splendid law that we must sacrifice our- 
selves to the advantage of others. They were '■^unable " to eat 
certain things and be innocent, we are perfectly " able " not to 
eat without moral surrender. It is on this high ground that 
we are to expound the apostle : and we arrive at the sense by 
noticing these fresh words which are introduced into the pas- 
sage. "We who are able;" that is, whose consciences are 
perfectly uninvolved. "Are bound;" the word is stronger 
than "oug/if " {E.Y. & Re.), and binds absolute duty. "To 
bear;" that is, to ///"/ tij> or carry. *' We who are able^'' and 
have no conscientious obligation to live upon meat, ought to 
shoulder the burdens of those who are ^^ unable'' to touch it, 
even though the burden be a weakness {aadevr/jua) ; the apostle 
returns to the original expression (14: i). And we are to bear 
each other's "weaknesses" on a principle which the apostle 
follows in the second verse, and which he immediately robs of 
all possibility of extravagance. 

2. Paul would be far from saying that we are " not to please 
ourselves." If a man should wear a cut-off coat, or keep his 
hat on before a king, Paul would be the last man to do the 
same, simply to " please his neighbor." Paul speaks senten- 
tiously, but with wonderful precision he strikes the idea again, 
and this time makes it complete: — 

2. Let each one of us please his neighbor for that which 
is good to edifying. 

A man boggles at meat. Merely to '''•please " him I am not to 
eat herbs. But the passage puts a whole case together. 
First, the meat is innocent (14: 14); second, the man does not 
think so (ib.); third, he is " unable " to touch it (ib. and v. 23); 
fourth, we are ^'- able'' not to touch it, and be absolutely guilt- 
less (v. i); fifth, simply to please him I would make no such 
submission. But Paul makes out the entire case. If I can 
innocently ^'■please " him, and thereby do him " good," and 
thence, not as an occasional, but, as Paul beautifully implies. 



36o ROMANS. 

an invariable consequence, edify and make him better, then I 
am '■^ bound'' for the sacrifice. We are left to settle the ques- 
tion of detail. A man may rebel against any particular demand. 
But Paul leaves us upon the high ground of '■^ good.'' Once 
settle that the sacrifice of flesh will edify my neighbor, and 
the point is gained. *' // is noble neither to eat flesh or to drink 
wine^ or to do anything whereby thy brother stumbles " (14 : 21). 
3. Our translators were wrong in saying *' even Christ " 
(E. V.) ; and expositors have fallen into the snare, and made 
Paul emphasize self-sacrifice by saying, ^^ Even Christ" sub- 
mitted to it ! What would Christ be without such sacri- 
fices ? The Revisers are aware of the mistake, and say, " For 
Christ also." This might seem near enough. But the expres- 
sion is «ai 7^P. and the usage of Paul makes that merely sig- 
nificant of an additional argument (2 Cor. 3 : 10 ; 13:4; Phil. 
2 : 27 ; I Thess. 3:4). The meaning is not '' Christ also^* 
but ^^for also" the Kai simply informing us that now we are to 
have an additional confirmation. Not only does it stand to 
reason that to do a neighbor ^^ good" is better than to eat meat 
(i Cor. 8 : 13), but, says Paul, there comes in still another rea- 
son. There is the example of " Christ." 

3. For, furthermore, Christ pleased not Himself; but, as 
it is written, The reproaches of them who reproach Thee 
fell on me. 

We are not to rest contented with this bare text from the 
sixty-ninth Psalm, for Paul has a way of quoting a text as a 
sort of taste and indication of all its context (4 : 18 ; 7 : 7). 
Perhaps this is a reason why we should welcome Trdvra, if it only 
had a little better authority, in the text that follows. We must 
exclude it, but we will show it in its place in brackets : — 

4. For whatsoever things were written aforetime were 
(all) written for our learning,— 

The ''«//," even in this single lyric, would include very 
remarkable things. If Paul meant to refer to the whole 
Psalm, as we think he did, it shows the instance of instances 
of the keenest self-inflicted sorrow. It is a Psalm which has 



CHAPTER XV. 361 

helped that hybrid notion of what it is to be Messianic, which 
has imagined that one of the songs of David may speak of 
himself in one part of it, and of Christ in another. No sen- 
tence could have suggested this except only the fifth verse. 
The first verse, " Save me, O God ; for the waters are come 
in unto my soul ; " and the ninth, " For the zeal of thine house 
hath eaten me up;" and the twenty-first, about the "gall," 
and " vinegar," could hardly be denied as Messianic utter- 
ances. But one wonderful sentence has ruined everything : — 
" O God, thou knowest my foolishness, and my sins are not hid 
from thee " (v. 5). That confession of sin has backed men 
squarely out from even a dream that the whole Psalm belongs 
to the Redeemer. But instead of disturbing anything, it is 
really the crown text of the Psalm. How often a verse is tram- 
pled and kept in a condition of waste by a single misprision in 
the rendering ! The Psalmist is really reaching the very con- 
-ception of the apostle. Our whole distress comes from a lin- 
guistic neglect. There has been the neglect of a particle (i^). 
Let me translate all as it stands : — " Oh God, thou knowest 
as to (^) my sin (foolishness E. V.)," that is, that I have none. 
The unriddling of all comes immediately : — " For for thy sake I 
have borne reproach " (v. 7); what has distressed us as a con- 
fession, is positively a splendid innocence. It is hard that that 
:grand Idmedh (f)) should have been thus for centuries over- 
looked. The English version has disposed of the other clause ; 
for it has corrected it in the margin. " O God thou knowest 
as to my sin, and my guiltinesses " (vicarious or inherited) " are 
not hid from thee." Let not my shame shame others (v. 6) ; 
^'because, for thy sake I have borne reproach " (v. 7). And 
then instantly the quotation of Paul, " For the zeal of thine 
house has eaten me up, and the reproaches of them that re- 
proached thee have fallen upon me.*' 

Paul has so much in his sentences that it is hard to notice 
everything. But we must not miss the fact that he does not 
say ^'- for his good to edifying'' (E. V., v. 2), but ^^ for good.'' 
We soon return upon the idea that pleasing one's neighbor 
does as much good to one's self as to the neighbor whose 



262 ROMANS. 

scruples we would spare. Paul does not forget this. He 
quotes our glorious Example, and then implies that tolerating 
others is most of all effective in '■^edifying " ourselves. " For 
whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our 
learning,'' — 

4.— That we through the patience and through the en- 
couragement of the Scriptures might have the hope. 

Nor is it at all to be forgotten that "the patience'* and 
"the encouragement" and, even, "the hope," so marked 
with the definite article, are all in " Scripture." " Through 
the patience and through the encouragement of the Script- 
ures might have the hope " (of the Scriptures). Paul pursues 
his listeners with their own writings. And intending to press 
upon the Jews their national " edification " in the acknowledg- 
ment of the Gentiles, he steals up to it by gentle conciliation^ 
always pushing forward into the front the words of their own 
law which they idolatrously reverenced. 

5. But may the God of the patience and of the encourage- 
ment give unto you to think the same thing as among ona 
another, in agreement with Christ Jesus. 

Here is the connection with what is behind (v. 4). If we want 
^* the hope'' revealed in ^^ the Scriptures," we must have ^^ the 
patience and the encouragement that is in the Scriptures." We are 
taught these by the example of Christ. Nevertheless they must 
be given to us by " God." And we must not be deaf to the 
eloquence with which Paul doubles upon his idea. Not only is 
the God he appeals to, "the^God of the patience and of the 
encouragement," who must needfully "give" them to us, but 
he entreats further. He overtures the saints to agree better 
than they did, and especially on the point he is about to broach 
to them (v. 8). He wishes them "to think (more) the same 
thing among (themselves)," as he beautifully expresses it 
** in agreement with Christ Jesus." If they really cared, 
they could get to that state in essential matters. And we are 
to notice in the next verse that this would really be to " glo- 
rify God." Each syllable tells. If " the glory of God " (v. 



CHAPTER XV, 363 

7), (and by that we are to mean moral ^^ glory,'' 6 : 4 ; 2 Cor. 
3 : 18 ; 2 Pet. i : 3), shines out in the example of Christ, and 
we cry to God to be affiliated to that example, then each fila- 
ment of these texts becomes distinct ; — May the God of the 
patience and the encouragement give unto you to think the 
same thing as among one another, in agreement with Christ 
Jesus : — 

6. That with like mind, in one mouth,— 

(And let it be understood, this is "like " to Christ and "in 
one mouth" with Christ as well as with His people ; for so 
the close suggests to us : for we thereby shine out with the 
same " glory " that He does ; for mark exactly the expres- 
sions : — "that with like mind, in one mouth,"—) 

6.— Ye may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

"Encouragement" (vs. 4, 5). This is a most unmanage- 
able Greek. Probably every expositor has tussled with the 
task of some one English to translate it. It really means to 
call to one's side. It means, therefore, to advocate (i Jo. i : i), 
because our defender calls us to his side. It might mean to 
fight for us. It certainly means to call on (Matt. 26 : 53). It 
means to exhort (^k.oX's^ 15: 32), and to entreat {Vl^XX. 18: 32), and 
to console {2 Cor. i : 6), and to encourage (see Robinson and Lid- 
dell), because all these words have a covert thought of calling 
in, or summoning the person near. We have often looked nar- 
rowly at the word help^ as for example in the text " I shall give 
you another helper" (Jo. 14 : 16) ; but like a brook with the 
banks thrown down, it would flow at once over too wide a sur- 
face. We have to leave it to its fate of being par excellence 
the much translated New Testament expression. But here 
undoubtedly it ties itself to the expression of '*' edifying.'* 
^^ Edifying " IS no random or on-a-sudden "^^^^" (v. 2). It 
requires ''^patience,'' and "-patience " is hopeless without 
'KapaK>.T}aiq. Military men might call it '' aid and comfort." Paul 
tracks it to *' the Scriptures " (v. 4), and teaches that " the 
hope " there taught is not to be had without these other things. 



364 ROMANS. 

He tracks them above all to God (v. 5). He tracks them 
as having been given to Christ (v. 6). And he begs that ^'- the 
God of the patience and the encouragement may give them also to 
us, or, as a means to that end, may grant that, being of '-^ like 
mind'' with one another, and with His Son, we " may glorify 
the God and Father " of our blessed Redeemer. These are 
very pregnant sentences. 

7. And he brings the whole series now to bear on the great 
Gentile prejudice (Eph. 2: 14). "Wherefore accept each 
other ; " and that will include of course the Jew accepting the 
Gentile. "Meats " (Heb. 9 : 10; 13 : 9) were, after all, a part 
of the great quarrel. The Jews, instead of being the '^strong'' 
were, strangely enough, the " weak " (14 : i), and Paul bowed 
to them unduly, when not under inspiration (Acts 16 13; 21 : 
23, 24), in many a point of unfounded stickling for their sym- 
bols : — 

7. Wherefore accept each other, as Christ also accepted 
you, to the glory of God. 

The points are brought together. ** Accept." Take close 
to each other (Philem. 17), so the word means, in the most 
affectionate inter-communion. " As Chrst also accepted us." 
What an irony ! '^ Accept'' a meat eater, or, to build it a little 
bigger, a man outside of Abraham, because Christ accepted 
us, and we, disgusting and abominable transgressors ! *' Ac- 
cept each other." Let it be mutual. The Gentile must 
^'■accept'' the Jew. And now he sums up on that idea of 
** glory." As it is " the glory of God " that is shining out 
in these condescensions of our Sacrifice, so let it shine out in 
us, " as Christ also accepted us to the glory of God." 

8. "For I say." Paul now is to introduce his ultimate 
point in the great international quarrel among believers : — 

8. For I say that Christ became a servant of circumcis- 
ion in the behoof of God's truthfulness, to confirm the 
promises of the fathers, 9. But that the Gentiles, in the 
behoof of mercy, might glorify God ;— 

A various reading in the seventh verse as between " accepted 



CHAPTER XV. 365 

you'^ and '•^accepted us'' is somewhat important. ^^ Received 
us" (E. V.) would have nothing specific ; but " received you " 
(Re.), which has the overwhelming right, applies to the Gen- 
tiles, to whom, in the majority, Paul was evidently writing. As 
Christ has overlooked all narrowness of race, and '' accepted 
you,'' so do you " accept each other." You the majority, and you 
the minority, " accept " alike ; ''for" — and now he brings for- 
ward an argument (v. 8), " Christ'* was undoubtedly " a ser- 
vant of circumcision." He was circumcised Himself, and, 
through His mother, was a devotee of Israelitish ordinances 
(Lu. 2 : 22 ; " their" not "'her "). Moreover, He was " a ser- 
vant of " the circumcised. He rarely abandoned Palestine. His 
chief centre was Jerusalem. And it was not all trial of the 
Syrophenician when He said, " It is not meet to take the chil- 
dren's bread, and to cast it unto dogs " (Matt. 15 : 27). The 
Jews were evidently building upon this, and it is a brief theory 
of such conduct in our Lord that is now coming forward as a 
shelter for the heathen. 

VsLul a.dmits SL servantship of Christ to ''circumcision" and 
then, in two irrefragable ways, first, by the intention of all this, 
and, second, by their own positive Scriptures, shows that 
Christ was to flow over from the Jew, and by the very force 
of its Jewish beginning make His ministry bless both them and 
the nations. 

" For I say" (This is the way Paul often gathers himself 
up, Gal. 3 : 17; 5 : 16; Eph. 4 : 17). " I say" Christ did really 
*' accept you " and all nations ; for though He was " a servant of 
'''circumcision" yet it was (i) to fulfil prophecy; and as 
prophecy is not made simply to be fulfilled, it was (2) to 
secure certain advantages, for the sake of which the things 
predicted were ordered to come to pass. In the first place, 
therefore, it was " in the behoof of God's truthfulness " to 
accomplish the fulfilment of "the promises of the fathers, 
but," " in the second place, " in thebehoof of (God's) mercy, 
that the Gentiles might glorify God ; " all of which he props 
by ample quotations : — 



366 ROMANS. 

9.— As it is written,— 

For this cause I will confess thee among the Gentiles, 
And sing unto thy name. 

10. And again it says,— 

Rejoice ye Gentiles, with His people. 

11. And again,— 

Praise the Lord all ye Gentiles, 
And let all the peoples bless Him. 

12. And again Isaiah says,— 

There shall be the root of Jesse, 

And He that arises to rule over the Gentiles ; 

On Him shall the Gentiles hope. 

Put all this together. 

Christ was beyond doubt " a servant of circumcision " (v. 8) : 
confined Himself to Palestine ; conformed Himself to heredi- 
tary ordinance ; consigned Himself to Israelitish following ; 
conceived Himself as brought into being for these two results, 
— first, that the prophecies might be fulfilled which made His 
whole kingdom to be started among the Jews (Is. 2 : 3), and, 
second, that by their vigorous beginning it might be set up the 
more vigorously among themselves and among other nations: 
all this, made clear by a certain remorseless logic, namely, 
that their own Scriptures teemed with it ; that the whole out- 
come of it was their own ; that words of which they made 
idols expressed it perfectly ; for it was this form of annihila- 
ting appeal with which the apostle annulled their prejudice all 
through this sharpest and grandest of the inspired epistles. 

"Of the fathers'' (v. 8). Such is the Greek ; and ''to the 
fathers'' (E. V. & Re.), for which the Revisionists supply 
"■ given'' 2ixv6. our old English version supplies ^' ;;z<a;^^," are 
not so correct. Paul could easily have said that. " The 
promises of the fathers " is the more comprehensive expres- 
sion, for it brings upon the horizon others' good, as well as 
for the Jews. It was flattering to the Jew, for it made 
those demi-gods of Israel depositaries for the whole world, as 



CHAPTER XV. 367 

well as for the oaths and pledges which were only for their 
people. 

13. He follows with a benediction, in which we are to be 
wide awake for particles, as indeed we ought to be in all 
Scripture. "But" is not to be changed into ^^ now'' (E. V. & 
Re.). Paul has been arguing of great national prophecies. 
He turns to immediate prayers. And then afterward to their 
own witness of the Spirit (v. 14). And, following that, to 
^''promises'' to him (v. 15), and evidences to be derived from 
his own mission to the Gentiles (v. 16). All these he starts 
upon with " but " ipk). We must not omit it. '' But God." 
For however much we may look to promises as old as Abra- 
ham, what the present may do for us is not to be overlooked. 
God filling a man with all joy is a better evidence in kind 
than law or prophet. Have these other evidences, *'but"— 
There is the force of the particle. " The God of hope " 
(E. V. & Re.). This would be well enough in almost any 
other sentence. But here he has been talking of "the hope" 
(v. 4 ; see 8 : 24). Moreover, the word has just been written, 
^' On Him shall the Gentiles hope " (v. 12). The omissions will 
most uncomfortably appear if we throw together the whole 
genuine translation : — 

13. But may the G-od of the hope fill you with all joy 
and peace in believing, that ye may abound in the hope 
through power of a Holy Spirit. 

14. "But." The apostle strikes again with evidences that 
are personal and still more close. " I myself am persuaded." 
And lest they should ask him, How ? he appeals in the next 
verse to " the grace given to (him)." And lest they should 
laugh at the conceit, he appeals in the next verse to " signs 
and wonders," which, of course, were a firm base for all that 
he could claim : — 

14. But I have become persuaded, my brethren, even I 
myself in your behalf, that even ye yourselves are full of 
goodness, filled with all the knowledge, able even to in- 
struct one another. 

This is all reduction on the part of the apostle of argument 



368 ROMANS. 

and proof down to their own time. The prophets prophesied 
of us, he had said (vs. 9-12), '■^ but'' then also I am a prophet. 
This may be a very wild and a very bold claim (roA/^^ypdf), " but " 
there are the miracles (v. 19). And, claiming to be a prophet, 
I return with that prophetic insight back to you, and declare 
that " you yourselves " (v. 14) dre evidences, " full of good- 
ness, filled with all the knowledge, able even to instruct 
one another ;" and, therefore, needing not to look to the 
prophets to know that Gentiles may be saved (vs. 9-12), but 
being evidences yourselves of the mercy of God to Gentile 
nations. 

15. "But." These particles move swiftly forward. This 
is the third ^' but.'' The prophecies favor the Gentiles (vs. 9- 
12), '■'■but" (i) may God settle the fact by actually blessing you, 
and by filling you with all joy and peace in believing " (v. 13). Not 
only so, '''but (2) I have become persuaded that He has blessed 
you, and that you are " full of goodness" having become evi- 
dences against the Jewish narrownesses yourselves. These 
evidences might be doubted, " but" (3) — Now we will add all 
the remainder of the testimony : — 

15. But I have written the more boldly in some measure, 
as one admonishing you, on the ground of the grace given 
to me of God, 16. That I might be a public ofilcer of 
Christ Jesus in respect to the Gentiles, serving in priestly 
form the Gospel of God, that the presenting of the Gentiles 
in sacrifice may be acceptable, being sanctified through a 
Holy Spirit. 

It will be noticed that Paul has two ends, which indeed may 
be concentred into one ; first, that the Gentiles might be 
accepted as legitimate saints, and, second, that he himself 
might be listened to as their legitimate apostle. His strongest 
argument is in the nineteenth verse : — 

17. I have therefore a ground of boasting in Christ Jesus 
in things pertaining to God. 

His strongest argument is two things, — miracle and Gentile 
conversions. Perhaps we had better say one thing, for the 
** power of signs " and " the power " of the new birth, what 
are they but the same ghostly attestation ? — 



CHAPTER XV. 369 

18. For I will not dare to say anything of those things 
which Christ has not wrought by me in order to Gentile 
obedience in word and deed, 19. In power of signs and 
wonders, in power of a Holy Spirit, so that from Jerusalem 
and round about unto Illyricum I have thoroughly ful- 
filled the Grospel of Christ, 

"In some measure" (v. 15). "I have written the more 
boldlyin some measure." This modest disclaimer of pre- 
tending to too much, must be traced to what has gone before. 
From eaters of meat Paul had risen to the Gentiles, absorbing 
the petty difficulty about flesh into the grander feud between 
the ''Greeks " and the Israelitish people. He had appealed 
again to their law, and showed that it accepted the heathen. 
And then, as we have just been seeing, he breaks off from 
that, and comes to the very evidence at our doors. For hea- 
then men /z^^been accepted. " Ye yourselves are full of good- 
ness'' (v. 14). Now it is after this appeal to their own exhib- 
ited acceptance that he uses this expression of reserve ; — " / 
have written the more boldly in some measure'' The prophets 
have heralded the Gentiles ; but then also I am a prophet. 
And ye have heralded yourselves. But then I bear witness to 
that fact " //^^ more boldly in some measure," h^CdiMSQ^ not only 
do ye exhibit it yourselves, but I, who am a " discerner of spir- 
its " (i Cor. 12 : 10) announce it as an inspired verity. And 
I attest my right to boldness, because " from Jerusalem 
round about unto Illyricum, in power of signs " I have 
built the base of these divine annunciations. 

" Public ofacer of Christ "(v. 16, lurovpydq, from la6g, people) ; 
not merely " minister " ( E. V. & Re.). " Serving in priestly 
form ; " not merely " ministering " (E. V. & Re.). " Presenting 
of the Gentiles in sacrifice ; " the whole a consistent allegory. 
Paul stands up to the altar lenovpydg, a servant of the people ; 
^'^ serving in priestly form j" offering up " the Gentiles in sacri- 
fice ; " and claiming now as the point of his speech that they 
are " a sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God through Jesus 
Christ." 

20. But counting it mine honor thus to preach not where 



370 ROMANS. 

Christ has been named, lest I be building on another man's 
foundation ; 21. But in the manner written :— 

They to whom no announcement of Him came, shall 

see ; 
And they who did not hear shall understand. 

" In the manner written " (v. 21). This corresponds to 
"thus" in the twentieth verse. " Not to preach " in that 
way, but this way (/ca0«f). Merely ^^ strtved'' (E. V.), or "■mak- 
ing if my aim " (Re., v. 20) is too general. We are to " adorn " 
the doctrine of Christ. And Paul makes it his kuUv or noble 
work (Rom. 12 : 17), to play the apostle, and pioneer the way 
for the after labors of the Kingdom. 

22. "Wherefore;" not only because I preferred pioneer 
work, but because, at an earlier day, when such work might be 
done at Rome, I was so engrossed ; " I have been hindered 
by many things." We have no right to sdij '' many times'* 
(E. v., marg. & Re.), or " much " (E. V.), for the simple reason 
that such readings can never prevail. As long as ra noXka is a 
great deal more catholic, and cannot possibly be forbid of its 
meaning as a general neuter, the form " ma7iy things^' so long 
as it makes excellent sense, will always return : — 

22. Wherefore also I have been hindered by many things 
from coming to you. 

23. "But now." Meyer's idea that the '' wherefore'* {v. 
22) cannot refer to his pioneer preferences, or Rome would be 
no "place" for him ever, forgets two announcements of the 
apostle, first, that chances for such work were giving out 
where he was, and, second, that he was to pass through 
Rome on a still grander and wider enterprise of pioneer en- 
deavor : — 

23. But now, having no more place in these parts, but 
having a strong desire these many years to come to you, 
24. Whensoever I take my journey into Spain I hope on 
that account in my journey through to see you, and to be 
brought on my way thitherward by you, when first in 
some measure I have been satisfied with your company. 

24. " I will come to you ** (E. V.) is undoubtedly an interpo- 



CHAPTER XV. 371 

lation. The uniform verdict is that we are to throw that 
phrase out, and that we are to consider the sentence as 
broken at the end of the verse (see Re.), then that it is to 
be resumed with an awkward " / say " (Re.), so as to start 
again in the twenty-fifth verse. We have had scores of such 
expedients in the Bible (2 : 20, 21 ; 5 : 12 ; t6 : 27) ; and we 
do not remember one that was really necessary. The Greek 
at fault is ydp in the twenty-fourth verse. Some men would 
manage by casting that out. But while the authority for 
casting out the other is absolutely complete (A B C D F K), 
the authority in the instance of ydp must be reckoned nothing 
(F). We have to accommodate ourselves to its being 
kept, and beyond all doubt there are instances, though exceed- 
ingly rare (Matt, i : 18 ; Rom. 9 : 17*), where ydp, in its illative 
effect, retires from its more usual position. We have given it 
its required force by the expression " on that account.'* And 
if this exception to the general idiom is allowed, all lies 
smooth, and both phenomena are explained ; first, the spurious 
copying in of "/ wi// come to you " (E. V.), or, second, the 
equally unauthenticated plan of rejecting ydp in order to ac- 
complish the same purpose of a continuous reading of the 
sentence. 

Whether Paul ever went to Spain is, of course, the old con- 
troversy. If he was imprisoned twice, he may have done so, 
but even then it is unsettled. If he was imprisoned once (I 
mean at Rome), we hardly can suppose he did go ; and, in 
either case, the plan of the journey must have been different 
from any which he here contemplates. Among the nota- 
bilia of exegetes a larger room ought to be allowed for those 
things which it is practically certain we never will be able 
even to conjecture. 

* This unnoticed bearing of ydp becomes strangely telling in Rom. 9 : 17. 
" So then it is with this animus," that is, in the light of the previous passage 
(v. 16), " that the Scripture says to Pharaoh, For this very cause have I 
raised thee up, that I might show in thee my power, and that my name might 
be declared throughout all the earth." 



372 ROMANS. 

25. But now I go to Jerusalem to minister to the saints. 

This is not exactly a high ideal of " Jerusalem " believers. 
Why were they " poor ? " And, with the habits engendered by 
the gospel, why were they ^' poor " so long ? A famine had 
accounted for it (Acts ii : 28, 29), and they had had bitter 
persecutions (i Cor. 7 : 26). But the famine was twenty years 
before, and the persecutions were scarcely general — except 
perhaps in cutting off the humbler classes from the opportu- 
nity of labor. Jerusalem was the metropolis of the Jews. All 
society was builded upon the continuance of their faith. The 
threats of a new religion would seem traitorous. Few nobles 
would embrace it. Few of the middle class, unless roused by 
a very miracle of grace. And masses of common people 
would be the " saints ; " impostors in many an imaginable 
case (Phil. 3 : 18) : '^poor," because they had never been rich; 
and slow to be moved, in their accustomed poverty, to the 
higher and nobler purposes of a diligent religion. 

Besides, they had " had all things in common " (Acts 4 : 32). 
This would be poison to a modern religionist. Luke merely 
records it. He nowhere says it had the divine approbation. 
We believe much in scripture is merely stated without com- 
ment (Judges 7 : 16 ; Jo. 21 : 3). To our modern thought 
the sinking of estates and the feeding of the lazy by the dili- 
gent, would be enough to blight business, and bring the 
provinces to be appealed to for a century of years. Those 
Ananias scenes were probably a mistake ; and if the apostles 
do not say so, it is like Paul's circumcising Timothy (Acts 16 : 
3), a thing of which we have a right to judge, and in respect 
to which wc are not in the least instructed by the actual nar- 
rative. 

26. For Macedonia and Achaia have thought it well to 
make some contribution to the poor among the saints at 
Jerusalem ; 27. For they thought it well, and are really 
debtors of those people. 

The Jews, as some one has remarked, had been " the librari- 
ans of the Christian world." They had borne the bondage of 
the faith (Acts 15 : 10), and had been rewarded for it by 



CHAPTER XV. 373 

manifold conversions (3 : 2). Their nation had contributed 
Christ (9:5) and perhaps Paul was gently hinting that they 
had contributed him j and that Gentiles had flocked into the 
church through the direct instrumentality of his own apostle- 
ship. 

27.— For if the Gentiles have partaken of the spiritual 
things of those people, they are bound also publicly to 
serve them in fleshly matters. 

Simply " to minister " (E. V. & Re.) is not far from the 
truth ; but why not preserve the Greek ? The individual Gen- 
tile could not pay back the individual Jew, but he could 
lELTovpyfjoai^ that is, literally, work for the people (kaoq). He could 
give back in a public way "fleshly" things {^'carnal,'' E. V. 
& Re., has slided from its sense) in return for ** the spiritual 
things" which Christ and His Israelitish ''■saints'' had been 
the means of for the heathen. 

28. Having, therefore, completed this, and sealed this 
fruit to them, I will come on by you into Spain. 29. But I 
know that, coming to you, I will be coming in a fulness of 
Christ's blessing. 

" And sealed this fruit to them." This is one of those 
fine passages that Paul's terseness causes to be lost. No com- 
mentator gets it ! The " fruit " here spoken of is not for the 
Jews, but for the Gentiles. What a noble division for a sermon ! 
In the first place, ''the fruit'' of alms-giving is not for the 
receiver but for the giver. In the second place, Paul had 
raised that "fruit " for Macedonia, and in the third place, he 
had "sealed (it) to them." " The fruit" of their alms-deed 
would be for their eternal well being. It seems sad that 
such a sentence should be secreted for hundreds of years. 

But, now, the reasons for this lying in secret ! Good schol- 
ars will smile at us, and at our newly suggested signification. 
And they will say, The sense is impossible. And it will be all 
the more easy to see it if it be so, or, whether that verdict can be 
maintained, because the reasons for the whole are built upon a 
single pronoun. If we examine the passage we will find amoq, 
in its different shapes, four times ; twice as aurwv (v. 27), and 



374 ROMANS. 

twice as avroiq (vs. 27, 28). It will be impossible to imagine, it 
will be said, that three of these pronouns (v. 27) refer to one 
class or body of men and one (v. 28) to the other. 

It would seem hard to go back to the " vulgarity " (Godet) 
of imagining Paul, in this solemn epistle, to have narrated 
that the money sent by him had been sealed up ! and, in fact, 
almost impossible, after the nobler and grander significance ; 
but what are we to do ? There have been immense strugglings 
about the sense, and that is a suspicious indication ; but look 
at the Greek ! Men will laugh at the intimation that Paul 
could suddenly have changed in the use of the pronoun amoq. 
But let us look at that. Is Greek any different from English ? 
Look at the English. " // hath pleased them verily, and their 
debtors they are. For if the Gentiles have been made partakers 
of their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister to them in 
carnal things'' {y. 2^]^. Is there any fixity of the pronoun 
there ? Besides, who gave us such certainty in the Greek ? 
The grammars talk very differently (Winer, §22:4, b). And 
so does the Bible. In Mark we read, " They bring unto Him 
(avrw, Christ) a blind man, and exhort Him {avr6v, Christ) that 
He should touch him {avrov, the man)." What says the pro- 
noun here ? See also Mark 9 : 27, 28. And again, in John 
II : 37, with the pronoun ohroq. " Could not ovto<;, which opened 
the eyes of the blind, have caused that even omoq should not 
have died ? " If any one greatly prefers, he might consider the 
closing avrdiq to belong to all the parties in the case, and sup- 
pose that ^^ fruit'' to both was '•^sealed," that is, made perma- 
nent, by both giving and being grateful. 

29. "But." Paul's plan seems but little for Rome, as he 
confesses that he is but taking them in his route. " But," he 
says, "I know" that, notwithstanding this, though my longer 
errand is " to Spain," yet " to you I will be coming in a 
fulness of Christ's blessing." Ae is rarely to be lost, and 
translating it " and" (v. 29, E. V. & Re.), or " now " (v. 30, E. 
V. & Re.), is usually a measure that has in the end to be given 
up. 

30. For look at its next occurrence. It is not, " Now 1 



CHAPTER XV. 375 

beseech you^ brethren " (E. V. & Re.), but the same disjunctive 
particle {6k). Paul has been saying, My aim is " Spain,'' but 
in my mere passage through I shall bring' ''/<? J^'^^^ " serious 
blessing. Then he inserts another (^£. " But," though I ex- 
pect to bless you, I do humbly entreat you to bless me. 

The cause was reasonable. He never came to Rome, at 
least upon his own plan of travel. He was going to Jerusa- 
lem ; and, as he afterward found out (Acts 21 : 11), " not know- 
ing what would befall (him) there " (Acts 20 : 22). The par- 
ticles, therefore, are exactly in place. When he came to Rome 
he would bless the?n (and he did, though in very different 
circumstances, Acts 28 : 31). 

"But," now, for himself : — 

30. But I exhort you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ, 
and by the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with 
me in prayers to God for me, 31. That I may be delivered 
from the unbelievers in Judea, and that my ministration, 
which is for Jerusalem, may be made acceptable to the 
saints, 32. So that, coming to you in joy by the will of 
God, I may together with you find rest. 

30. Do not the Revisionists carry too far the right to use 
the pronoun by mere force of the article, as in this instance of 
ToiQ before npooevxaic ? King James, with no such claim, inserts 
it in italics. But a closer reading of the passage would not 
want it at all, and would reject it altogether. The prayers 
were not to be all theirs, but they were to unite with htm 
"in prayers" to the Almighty, 31. "Be made." Paul had 
reason to fear (Gal. 2 : 2, 9) that Jerusalem church people 
might find it not altogether " acceptable " to have him as the 
alms-bestower from among the churches of the heathen. 
'EAflcjv and eWcj are indifferent readings in the thirty-second 
verse. Neither authority nor sense gives us much to choose in 
our selection between them. 

33. "But" (and here again, see Rom. 15 : 5, the apostle 
gives up his own will in respect to the particular way in which 
"God" shall bless) :— 

33. But the God of peace be with you all. Amen. 



376 ROMANS. 

We must not too perseveringly roughen our translation by 
insisting upon the article ; but undoubtedly there is purpose 
in the expression, "the Godof the peace." The correspond- 
ence is exact with the fifth verse. Paul had been laboring 
there to tell them how ^^the hope of the Scriptures might be bred 
by " the patience and the encouragement of (them)." He finishes 
all thoroughly, and then indulges himself in the appeal, " May 
the God of the patience and the hope " do all directly ! His course 
is the same in this passage. He has ventured to be specific 
with the Almighty, and to suggest to the people what he 
meant to do for them (v. 29), and what he begged that they 
might pray for for him, along with his own prayers for his 
deliverance in Jewry. God blessed neither. And yet He blessed 
both. For He answered these specific ^^ prayers " in *' the ful- 
ness of the blessing,'' which Paul asked in his more general pe- 
tition. "But," as though he had said, ''6^^^" may choose 
other ways to bless ; *' May the God of the peace,'* — that is, of 
this whole peaceful "rest" (v. 32) that I am aiming to enjoy 
with you in my journey, "be with you all," though I never 
make the journey, and though He realize " the peace " (as indeed 
He did) in other and still more glorious administrations. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

1. But I commend unto you Phoebe, our sister, who is a 
deaconess of the church which is in Cenchrese, 

"But." There are readings which omit this, but the prepon- 
derance is in its favor. I beg the other things (15 : 30), but 
"Phoebe" I directly send to you. " A deaconess." Not 
SiaKSvcaoa. That was a coined word, not used till afterward. 
AioLKovog might be feminine. "Cenchrese" was one of the 
ports of Corinth. That there was an office of " deaconess " the 
following are the proof passages (16 : i; i Tim. 5:9). 

2. That ye may receive her in the Lord in a way worthy 
of the saints, 



CHAPTER XVI, 377 

The question, Which this means, — " worthy of" them who 
** receive,'* or " worthy of" her who is to be received, need 
give no difficulty. The worthiness of the manner of the act 
is traceable to the saintship of both parties. 

2.— And that ye provide her in whatever matter she may 
have need of you ; because also she herself has been a pa- 
troness of many, and of me myself. 

Not simply a ^^ succorer'* (E. V. & Re.), but a woman of 
position, who could stand before one (TrpoaTdng, feminine of 
TrpoardTTfc), and open the way. It will be observed that Paul 
puts this woman first. There is no reason to doubt that she 
was the carrier of his epistle (see closing inscription), and may 
very well have been sent by Paul to conciliate the Roman 
churches, herself " a deaconess " in another communion. 

3. Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow laborers, in Christ 
Jesus, 

** Prisca " is the original name. Priscilla is a term of en- 
dearment \dtmin., Acts i8 : 2). The wife stands first, per- 
haps as the more prominent and active worker. 

4. Who for my soul's sake bowed their own neck ; to 
whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches 01 
the Gentiles. 5. And greet also the church which is at 
their house. 

We have not the smallest clue to what the apostle means 
by this bowing of the neck. No incident explains it. We are 
left sheerly to the language. The mere probabilities of the 
language seem to intimate a moral bowing rather than one 
upon a scaffold. In the first place, y\)vxv, in the wide majority 
of cases, means **soul." In the second place, puttifig down 
the "neck" (for that is the distinct Greek), means generally 
humiliation (Gen. 49 : 8 ; Mi. 2 : 3). In Eastern war the victor 
set his foot upon the neck (Jos. 10 : 24). In the third place, the 
word is " neck^'' not " necks " (E. V. & Re.), which points again 
to other than a literal exposure to beheading. In the fourth 
place, the word is not lay down (E. V. & Re.), h\x\. put doum or 
i>ow. That counts somewhat. And, in the fifth place, some 



378 ROMAN. 

great act of humiliation, or modest retirement from the fronts 
on the part of these fellow crafts-people of Paul, would be 
more likely to be alluded to without separate detail, than the 
more stirring feat of risking their lives in his succor. 

Some ingenious commentator suggests that this " church 
(in the) house'* may have owed its location (see also Acts i8: 
3 ; I Cor. i6 : 19) to certain weaving lofts that were necessary 
in the tent-making of Prisca. 

5.— Salute Epsenetus, my well-beloved, who is a first 
fruits of Asia unto Christ. 

While the reading '' Achaia " (E. V.) was preferred, diffi- 
culty was made because this honor was assigned to Stephanas 
in another passage (i Cor. 16 : 15). But a solution which 
Meyer calls a '' make-shift " {in loc.) is hardly so bad as thaty 
viz., to insist that the appellation might be for both, as there 
is no presence of the definite article. 

6. Greet Mary, who toiled in many things for your 
behalf. 7. Greet Andronicus and Junias, my kinspeople 
and fellow prisoners, who are of note among the apostles, 
and who were in Christ before me. 

'lowtavmaybe either "Junias" or ^' Junta'' (Re,, marg.). 
We never can tell. If it was a man, it agrees a little better 
with the association, viz., " among the apostles;'* but if it is 
a woman, and she is in association with her husband, it agrees 
sufficiently well with that, and with other habits of the 
passage. 

8. Greet Amplias, my beloved in the Lord. 9. Greet 
Urbanus, our fellow- worker in Christ, and Stachys, my 
beloved. 10. Greet Appelles, the approved in Christ, 
Greet certain among the household of Aristobulus. 

10. Not '' t/iem which are of (E. V. & Re.). There is a 
care about that. Not all this man's ** household,** but " cer- 
tain.*' The difference is made by krwv (see v. 11). 

11. Greet Herodion, my kinsman. 

Paul seems to have had a powerful family* (v. 7 ; Acts 23 : 

* Some think the word should be translated *' fellow countrymen " 
(Godet). 



CHAPTER XVI. 379 

i6). Had it been otherwise, he hardly would have been taught 
by Gamaliel (Acts 22:3; see also Acts 22 : 25-29). 

11.— Greet such of the house of Narcissus as are in the 
Lord. 

See com., verse 10. 

12. Greet Tryphsena and Tryphosa, toilers in the Lord, 
Greet the beloved Persis, who toiled in many ways in the 
Lord. 

These {raq and finq) are, of course, all women. 

13. Greet Rufus, the chosen one in the Lord, and her 
who is both his mother and mine. 

It is not an obscure conjecture, but a lively probability, that 
this "Rufus" was the child of the cross-bearer, Simon (Matt. 
27 : 32), and that the " mother " was the wife of this African, 
and herself a negress. If Simon was converted by his advent- 
ure, and his conversion saved his wife, and his wife trained 
her children, and her children became distinguished in the 
church, and she herself most active and tender in her piety, 
how interesting does that scene among the soldiers immedi- 
ately make itself. And yet these //>, which, stated as we 
have done, seem almost ridiculous, are bound by the strongest 
links when we connect them by the name of ^^ Rufus'' It is 
not at all likely that there were two Rufuses in the church, 
and that both of them were only once mentioned, and that 
each of them was so distinguished as to be named familiarly 
and lifted up above other believers. But unless there were, 
this Rufus, who here receives the salutation, was the child of 
the negro Simon (" the father of Rufus," Mar. 15 : 21), and 
the child of a woman so tenderly devout, that Paul stands 
ready to call her "his mother and mine.** 

This much is scarcely conjecture ; but the filling out of the 
picture is strangely attractive. Was Simon converted at Gol- 
gotha ? or did the soldiers mark some expression of compas- 
sion, and make fun of him, or else punish him, by laying on the 
cross ? Did Simon convert his wife, or was there in that Afri- 
can home a most motherly saint, who led Simon to the cross. 



SSo ROMANS. 

and reared Rufus and Alexander to be her eminent children ? 
We cannot tell. But it would be folly to pass this sentence 
without the thought, that here, thirty years farther on, the 
scene at the cross might be bringing the ripe fruits of a 
glorious and divinely recorded influence of a wonderful devo- 
tion. 

14. Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Her- 
mas, and the brethren that are with them. 

These may or may not be names since traditional in the 
earliest writings. 

15. Greet Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister 
and Olympas, and all the saints that are with them. 

There seems no familiar name here. 

16. Greet one another in a holy kiss.— 

A command, like washing the saints feet (i Tim. 5 : 10), or 
taking off our shoes for reverence (Mar. i : 7), or anointing 
guests with oil (Lu. 7 : 46), scarcely meant to be for all time, 
but illustrative, and in that day a suitable means of express- 
ing good will and customary consideration for our brethren. 

16.— All the churches of Christ greet you. 

17. "But." Turning from what is affectionate and good, 
Paul brings before them the possibilities of discord and 
evil : — 

17. But I exhort you, brethren, to have a view to those 
who create the divisions and the occasions of stumbling, 
contrary to the lessons ye have learned, and do ye turn 
away from them. 

"Lessons" is better \\v2,xi ^^ teaching '' (Re., w^r^.) in the 
mere matter of English ; for we cannot say, "Ye have learned 
teaching y And it is better than " doctrine " (E. V. & Re.) in 
the matter of the sense; for the ^t^axriv was practical as well as 
theoretical, and " doctrine " has too circumscribed and uncom- 
prehensive a sense. 

18. For such persons are not serving our Lord Christ, but 
their own belly ; 



CHAPTER XVI. 381 

It is not necessary to take "their own belly '* literally, or 
to imagine, with Meyer, a tendency in " such persons " to an 
Epicurean taste, but to understand it, as in the Epistle to the 
Philippians, of intense selfishness. When Paul says, " Whose 
God is their belly " (Phil. 3 : 19), we are not at all sure it might 
not comprehend an ascetic Pharisee, or a miser, too deadly 
selfish to worship his ^^ belly'' sufficiently, if we were to speak 
in a literal sense. 

18.— And by the good and fair talk deceive the hearts of 
the innocent. 

" Simple " (E. V.) is not so good as " innocent " (Re.), 
because it does not provide that a man, anything but " simple^" 
may be deceived because of his innocence. 

19. For your obedience has come abroad to all men.— 

Therefore you may belong to this very company of guileless 
ones. 

19.— I rejoice over you, therefore. But I would have you 
wise as to that which is good, but as to the evil not min- 
gling with it. 

" Simple " (E. V.) in the eighteenth verse is from the Greek 
uKaKog, which simply means nol evil. And though the Revisers 
improve the translation by the word "■ innocent'' (Re.), yet it 
is easy to see that guilelessness and a certain sort of simplic- 
ity is at the bottom of the text. But to repeat the translation 
" j/;«;J/^" (E. V.) in the verse that follows after, and for the 
Revisers to say '■'■simple''' also, is hard to understand. The 
word is aKEfiaiog. It means unmixed, or not mixed with. It never 
means " simple," in the artless or guileless or easily deceived s,tn?,t, 
in any classic sentence. And Paul would be utterly at vari- 
ance if he told of a deep snare for the " simple " in one text, 
and then urged those endangered by it to be " simple concern- 
ing evil" (E. V. & Re.) in another. The word should be bet- 
ter translated than it is in other passages. We are to be as 
*' wise as serpents, and unmixed or uncontaminated as doves " 
(Matt. 10 : 16) ; that is, we should have the cunning of the 



382 ROMANS. 

serpents, but stay out from among them. " That ye may be 
blameless and uncontaminated* (that is, not mixing with them)^ 
in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom 
ye shine as lights in the world " (Phil. 2 : 15). 

20. But the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your 
feet shortly. 

We have not in the English three features of what Paul had 
in the Greek : — first, the article before elpijvrjg, which might re- 
call to a Greek mind " the peace " which Paul had been 
striving for in all his recent directions. His greetings had 
been redolent of it (vs. 3-16) ; and so are now these stern 
warnings against discord. We will not introduce the article ; 
but the Greeks had the advantage of us. Second, the article 
before " Satanas,'' and, third, the meaning of Satanas, which 
lay naked to a Grecian's eye. The language of the Greek 
reveals more Paul's purpose in the uttering of such a proph- 
ecy. It all fits up closer by the help of what is noticed at a 
glance ! I send you fervent greetings. But to make it pos- 
sible to love and to greet and to help each other, flee discord. 
Keep utterly unmixed with agents and agencies of quarrel. 
Watch against being cheated of religious peace. And ^' the 
God of the peace shall bruise the Adversary (who is at the 
bottom of these attempts) under your feet evrdxei, quickly ;'* 
and then follows the usual benediction : — 

20.— The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. 

We have not entered into the ideas which would suppose 
that these two last chapters were fragmentary, and were not 
all sent together through Phoebe, or through any other person, 
to any of the Romans, or to any other of the churches. The 
reasons for such suppositions are, that all these fragments, as 
some are disposed to name them, are in no instance all of 
them in any one known manuscript. That is a strong con- 
sideration. But our interest in the whole thought is lessened 
by the fact that it makes not the smallest difference. How 

* This is the only other New Testament case. 



CHAPTER XVI. 383 

these sentences were fixed, or whether all were sent to every- 
body, and whether some of these closing matters, possibly 
whole salutations, were not meant for different cities, are ques- 
tions hardly worth answering. Or, to speak with more per- 
fect verity, they hardly concern a doctrinal student of the 
Word, however much they may interest explorers into the 
text. 

If Phoebe went around with different endings, and appended 
this or appended that at a personal discretion, what bearing 
could it have ? It might seem that something of the kind 
might be discreet. Or if even some fragments are false, it 
might seem sad to add to our uncertainties, but how could 
we help it ? and they are really so few, that the Word of God 
would remain singularly well kept, after all the turmoil of inter- 
vening generations. 

We sacrifice nothing, therefore, if we treat Paul's Greek as 
though an unseparated monograph. If there be anything 
spurious, let it be shown, like any other false reading in the 
Bible. If there be anything kept in Phoebe's hands, and added 
for particular believers, so much the better. It was part of 
Paul's inspiration, under the hand of God. If there was 
anything for other people whose names were on distant lists 
(as some conjecture about Aquila, Prisca, Epaenetus, etc.,), what 
matter ? It has been a blunder of the church ; but how 
strange that so little of the sort has tinged the inspired light 
of this wonderful epistle ! 

21. After greeting, in the way that we have seen, certain se- 
lected Romans, he sends greeting generally from those about 
him. 

21. Timothy, my fellow- worker, greets you ; and Lucius 
and Jason and Sosipater, my kinspeople. 22. I Tertius, 
who wrote the epistle, greet you in the Lord. 

22. Doubtless Paul's amanuensis. 21. Why Timothy is so 
much out of our notice, and who Lucius and Jason were (v. 
21), we never shall be able to make certain. 

23. Gaius, mine host, and of the whole church, greets 



384 ROMANS. 

you. Erastus, the treasurer of the city, greets you, and 
Quartus, the brother. 

24. The weight of MS. authority is on the whole against 
the twenty-fourth verse* (see Revision). 

25. But to Him who is able to establish you according to 
my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to 
the revelation of a mystery kept silent through times eter- 
nal ; 26. But now made manifest, and by prophetic writ- 
ings made known according to an arrangement of the eter- 
nal God, to all the nations unto an obedience of faith ; 27. 
To an only wise God, be that through Jesus Christ to which 
there shall be glory forever. Amen. 

25. "But; "as something stronger and warmer than all 
our salutations to each other. ** To Him who is able.'* This 
is more than mere ability or power (see 9 : 22 ; 15 : i). It is 
a power to do a thing, and yet be consistent with what is eter- 
nally wise. "According to my Gospel." That creates the 
eternal consistency, and makes God '^ able'' (3 : 26). "Estab- 
lish;" see remarks upon this, i : 11. "Mystery." What 
could be more profound than the plan of pardon? "Kept 
silent," — before and after the creation ; before, as a secret of a 
decree back in the everlasting, and after (v. 26), till a "reve- 
lation " was made, "and " (re) that " by prophetic writings, 
according to an arrangement of the eternal God." " Unto 
an obedience of faith." ''Obedience'' (which when we look 
at its very nature, love, is all that is moral in the world) is of 
the very nature of faith, and marks this, which occurs twice in 
the New Testament, as a very vital expression {se.t '' obedience 
of faith," I : 5). 27. " Only wise," as He only can be who 
possesses foreknowledge and power. All else is venture. 
"To which." This is the only possible reading that gives 
syntax to the sentence. We will not go over the controver- 
sies. The puzzle springs from t>, which cannot be gotten rid 
of. Our Bibles reject it, but out of a sheer desperation — which 
sanctions everything; but which must recoil; for few questioned 

* 24. "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." 



CHAPTER XVI. 385 

syllables of the Greek stand on better or more constant 
authority. Meyer solves the difficulty by the hackneyed 
thought that Paul forgot himself.* It is easier to take the 
one manuscript (B) and throw out the w altogether. The 
slovenly apology for the Holy Ghost has never in one instance 
prospered (2 : 20, 21 ; 5 : 12 ; 15 : 24, 25) ; and it is better to 
imagine the very best MSS. to have strayed, than that Paul, 
flushed by his work, has forgotten one single particle. We 
come, therefore, to a solution which we are surprised that no 
scholar should suggest, and which is really the only way to 
give absolute grammar to the expressions. We may flatter the 
syntactic speech, but we hardly writ it down before we imag- 
ined purpose in it beyond the more commonplace ascription. 
Paul says. " To him who is able ; " and we have explained the 
** able " as meaning in consistency with truth. Paul paraphrases 
it as meaning ^'-according to my gospel j'' and, therefore, 
very naturally at the last, makes all that he is to ascribe to 
God possible " through Jesus Christ.'* And, therefore, it 
would range with other profoundnesses in Paul to pause a 
little in the expression, till he can imagine the thing to be 
praised, to be actually achieved. Look in this light at the a> 
in the sentence. It destroys the more commonplace reading, 
" To the only wise God be glory " (E. V.). It makes unneces- 
sary the ungrammarly sentence, " To the only wise God through 
Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever'' (Re.) ; and actually 
adds point to Paul by making Divine Providence win the 
honor before receiving it ; for we put it all in the strictest 
grammar by saying, " Unto him ivho is able to establish you, 
etc., etc., unto an only wise God, be that through Jesus Christ io 
which there shall be glory forever. Amen.'' Such pregnancy of 
6f is of course notorious. It rules through all the Greek (Lu. 
9: 36 ; 23: 14 ; Acts 8: 24 ; 22: 15; Rom. 14: 22; 15: 18; 2 Cor. 
12 : 17), but it is especially Paulinian. We have expounded 

* The Revisers must have agreed in this, for they have adopted a sentence 
which cannot be parsed, and which in the true Meyer sense loses itself in 
its own confusion. 



386 ROMANS. 

it at length under another sentence (5 : 12). If no one is at- 
tracted to it by preference, our notion is that he must be 
forced upon it by the grammar. And Paul has an especial 
fondness, when he has worn out a more forth-right text (3 : 
20), to put a pebble in it like this (see Gal. 2: 16, kav firi, ^^ save^*' 
Re.)f and to turn it from a common rut, and make a reader 
pause for a profounder meaning. 



EXCURSUS 

ON THE 

FAMOUS PASSAGE IN JAMES 

(J AS. 2 : 14-26). 

A shock of apparent discomfiture attended our work when 
we discovered that Jas. 2 : 14-26, in its actual Greek, did not 
bear out the rendering of any of our versions. It was a great 
surprise to us. The plain words, " Was not Abraham^ our 
father Justified by works 'i (E. V. & Re., v. 23), and then, most 
deliberately repeated, " In like manner^ was not also Rahab, the 
harlot, justified by works 2 " (E. V. & Re., v. 25), and, plainer yet, 
" A man is justified by works, andnotby faith only " (E. V. & Re., 
V. 24) seemed a God-send to our particular view. It was a stroke 
of amazement that upset the whole of this, and confronted us 
with a Greek which honesty of search made us believe could 
not submit to any such translation. 

Place the Greek before your eye and judge whether James, 
or any one else, has fallen upon such an order, if he meant 
the two earlier texts to imply a question. 

** Abraham, our father, was not justified by works " is 
the plain artless order of the speech. "Likewise also 
Bahab was not justified by works." What are we to do, 
therefore ? 

An immediate search into the whole of James not only 
revolutionizes the epistle, and saves it from the attacks of 
Luther and from the bickerings that have lent it fame, but 
actually, on a deeper look, rids it of contrariety with Paul, 
and learns from it, better than from Paul, that faith itself is 
incipient holiness. 

14. What is the profit, my brethren, if a man say he has 
faith, but have n(»t works ? Can the faith save him ? 

This by itself is very striking. "The faith." The Revis- 



388 EXCURSUS. 

ion says " that faith.'' The article warrants some attention to 
its influence. We start, therefore, with the idea that there are 
two kinds of ** faith; " and James agrees with Paul that one 
kind is " dead" (vs. 17, 26) and that the other kind is saving, 
and that this saving kind has works ; as we have been labor- 
ing to expound it, is moral or is the faith of the conscience ; 
as the Roman Catholics declare, is^^ Jides formata^" or, by their 
strangely perfect, because original or patristic specification, a 
" faith infused with love ; " as Moses calls it, " a faith counted 
as righteousness " (Gen. 15 : 6) ; as Paul calls it, the " receiv- 
ing of the love of the truth " (2 Thess. 2 : 10) ; or, in his epis- 
tle to the Galatians (5 : 6), what is perhaps the strongest testi- 
mony of all, " faith (kvepyov[xev7], that is) made active by love ; " 
as though faith, when saving, contained love (as the atmosphere, 
when vital, or able to corrode, must contain oxygen) ; so 
bringing us back to James, that *' faith without works is hpyij 
(Greek a priv. and £p>4)), inoperative^ or, more literally put, 
unworking " (v. 20). 

Next comes another expression, " dead according to its 
very self." It cannot mean " being alone " (E. V.), for the 
Greek does not warrant it. This the Revisionists have seen. 
But then " in itself" (Re.) has unspeakably less appearance of 
being the sense (see Acts 28 : 16). Why did not Paul say 
*'/«.? " "' According to'' is not only the match for mra, but is 
the very edge and essence of all the thought. As . the expres- 
sions," Depart in peace ; be ye warmed and jllled," are dead 
according to their very selves^ if there be the full indulgence of 
self, and no outcoming of food and clothes, " so faith," con- 
sidering its deep pretentions ; taking it as a belief in hell ; con- 
sidering it as a profession of God and Christ and sin and grace 
and pardon and eternal life, if it be not under the impression 
of any of these things by the light of a new conscience and by 
the token of some obedience to their claims, "is dead," just 
as those speeches are, — " dead" in the very light of the things 
pretended, that is, ^^ dead" as these three Verses illustrate it, 
" according to its very self" 

15. If a brother or sister become naked, and be destitute 



JAMES II. : 14-26. 389 

of daily food, 16. And one of you say unto them, Go in 
peace, be ye warmed and filled, but give them not the 
things needful for the body; what is the profit ? 17. Even 
so faith, if it have not works, is dead according to its very 
self. 

18. " Yea, a man may say" (E. V. & Re.). This is one of 
those numerous cases where a sense is dashed at the very cri- 
sis of a passage. James is made to introduce by the word 
oAAd, which means " but " with wonderful steadiness, a sen- 
tence in which he is to appear to agree ; in fact, two verses (vs. 
18, 19), which are to be read as lying in unity with his whole 
idea. How queer if, for the course of whole centuries, these 
verses, like scores of others in Scripture, should have been 
read as just the opposite of the thing intended. 

18. But a man will say,— 

Surely that sounds like an objector. And all the Greek 
agrees. And the twentieth verse sounds like the taking up 
of a reply. 

James seems to imagine that " a man " may push the Jame- 
sian idea too far. He means to hold on to Paul in Paul's exact 
teaching, that "faith" is everything. Nevertheless he must 
exalt the "works." But he means now to guard "works" 
on the gospel side, and keep them from displacing " faith." 
This is the gist of the two verses (18, 19). " But a man will 
say,"— 

18.— Thou hast faith, and I have works. Show me thy 
faith by thy works, and I will show thee by my works my 
faith. 19. Thou believest that God is one; thou doest 
well ; the devils also believe and tremble. 

That is, " faith " in any degree, even to that, rare among 
the Pagans, of acknowledging the unity of God, is, by your 
confession now ^^ dead if it have not works." And how true 
that is, is made incontestable in the cases of the demons, who, 
with the brightest kind of faith, learn only to " believe and 
tremble." '♦ Works" therefore, are the test, and we need 
less care for ""faith." This is the mistake which James 
suffers to expound itself in these two verses. 



39° EXCURSUS. 

'' Bui a man will say, Thou hast faith." There is no doubt 
about that. But then the demons beUeve, too, the highest truths. 
"Works " are the real token. So, when all comes to all, you 
have to prove your ^^ faith'' by " works.'* Now why need I 
bother about the question of ^^ faith " at all ? If " works " are 
the vital thing, and you have to exhibit your '■^ faith " by 
" ze/^^r/^j-," why may not I show that I have ^^ faith," without 
being really conscious of it or in any wise doctrinally possess- 
ing It, if only I have " works ? " 

Nothing could be more aptly looked into. If you, who 
notoriously have faith, nevertheless are not sure of safety till 
you have demonstrated its saving character by its element 
in works, why may not I, who notoriously have works, or to 
express it more truthfully, may be imagined for the sake of 
argument to possess the works, ignore the faith, inasmuch as 
that is a thing which the demons have, and that in the higher 
shape of the unity of the Almighty ? 

20. How finely now comes in the character, " O vain man." 
It is an awful platitude if aXld means ^^ yea " (E. V. & Re.) 
and the two hinging verses (vs. 18, 19) are all on the side of 
the apostle. But if it is the address of a rep/y, behold how 
perfect it is ! James would argue, Faith is not to be given 
up. It is all that the Scriptures demand. "Abraham, 
our father, was not made righteous by works." (v. 21). 
Nor was " Rahab " (v. 25). Men must seek God if they 
would be saved. But the faith of seeking does not mount 
up to being saving till it becomes moral ; ex origine till it is of 
the Spirit ; consequentially till it is of the conscience ; till it 
sees the beauty of Christ (Jo. 17 : 3) ; till it is " made active by 
love " (Gal. 5:6); till it can be '' reckoned " as holy (Rom. 
4:3); or, as James expresses it, till it " have works ; " for 
he does not carry his point by acceding to the caviller that 
faith need not be noticed, but simply that faith is everything, 
nevertheless that that faith is nothing that does not show 
itself by the works of the Gospel. 

20. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without 
works is idle ? 21. Abraham, our father, was not made 



JAMES II. : 14-26. 391 

irighteous by works in that he offered Isaac, his son, upon 
the altar. 22. Thou scest that faith worked with his 
works, and by works was faith made to answer its end. 

It will be seen how utterly shapeless the next verse would be 
if the usual versions were admitted. If we are to read, " Was 
not Abraham justified by works ? " (E. V. & Re.), how absurd 
to add (v. 23), ** And the Scripture was fulfilled that saith, 
Abraham believed God.'* But if it is a recoil from unbeliev- 
ing ^^worksy" and James is thoroughly Pauline, and means to 
insist on faith, and faith made moral, and working with 
works, then the summing is in place : — 

23. And the Scripture was fulfilled that says :— Abraham 
believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteous- 
ness, and he was called the Friend of God. 

Let us return now to a few verbal intimations. " Idle " (v. 
20) is a various reading, acknowledged in our day (see Re.). 
The word is apyv (irom. a priv. and ipyw, without work) ; a fine 
description of its being " dead'' (vs. 17, 26) ^^ Faith without 
works is unworh'ng ;" 2ind that, in all the things to which it 
could be applied, came to mean "/^/^," and gradually came 
to mean nu// or just nothing at all (see, in the verbal shape, 
Rom. 7 : 2, 6). " Worked with " (v. 22). That astounding 
act of offering Isaac was, at bottom, faith (see Heb. 11 : 17, 
material dative) ; but it was a faith working with works ; that 
is, a faith with *which love, which is the essence of good works, 
is incorporate ; or, more profoundly still, a faith which " has 
works ; " that is, a faith which is a case of love ; just as, in 
another case, love repines at sin, or is or actuates true repen- 
tance. "Accounted" (v. 23) ; not strictly. Abraham's real 
state was positive sinfulness. But '' accounted ; " as an earn- 
est ; as a covenanted condition ; as a promise of more ; as a 
condition of less sinfulness than he once submitted to ; as the 
beginning of a perfect "righteousness" in Augustine's sense 
{Migne, vol. 5 : pp. 790, 867) ; incipient here, but growing, 
from this advancing germ, into a perfect ** righteousness " in 
the Garden of the Lord. 



392 EXCURSUS. 

24. Do ye really see,* then, that a man is made righteous 
by works, and not rather by faith only ; 25. In like man- 
ner as Bahab, the harlot, was not made righteous by works 
when she had received the messengers, and sent them out 
another way ? 

This translation (vs. 24, 25) serves as a sufficient summing 
up. 

26. For as the body without a spirit is dead, so faith 
without works is dead also. 

Luther, therefore, was rash about his "straw epistle." The 
whole idea of James is, that salvation is alone by " faith ; " but 
that, as an unworking ^^ faith " is null or apyij, "works** must 
be an ingredient of the " faithy* or, more philosophically stated, 
love^ which is what is moral in " works y' must be the ingredi- 
ent of ^'■faithy' in order that it be saving.f 

* The seeing in the twenty-fourth verse ippau), is different from that in 
the twenty-second verse (/JActtw), as meaning to see intimately or down to the 
very bottom. 

f This is the sound averment of the Papists, that ** Jides formata (saving 
faith) is faith infused >vith love." What a pity they trample their own defi- 
nition by perfectionism and supererogatory excellence ! 



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